Underground
by Punctuator
Summary: A romantic trip to London turns strange and dangerous when Lisa and Jackson run athwart a gang of tech thieves. Rated for violence, sensuality, naughty language, and a prologue longer than the Central Line. This is the followup to DOA. Mind the Gap.
1. Prologue

**UNDERGROUND**

In the ash-dirty cold of a very early February morning, Jackson Rippner looked out across a rooftop at the Chicago skyline and thought how he seemed to be living during a time of predestined, surreal moments. The second of such moments-- at present, he acknowledged three-- had come three days ago, when Lisa Reisert knocked him unconscious. The third had come a day later than that, when her father, Joe, nearly strangled him in a headlock in Lisa's kitchen. And the first had come-- almost unfair to include it in the count, but it seemed to fit-- two years back, when Paul Miller had kissed him in the shower.

It had been almost a month to the day before the launch of the Keefe mission. Jackson Rippner had a head full of plans and, after roughly a month of observing Lisa Reisert, a body at least half full of hormones. A simple biological response, he told himself: desire. He didn't bother denying it as perversion: she was a gorgeous young woman, and his chemicals were reacting accordingly. Nothing odd there. Nothing worthy of alarm, certainly nothing worth reporting to the company's psych department.

Still, heading into those weeks preceding Flight 1019, Rippner was a tense young man. He channeled said tension into running, yoga, weight lifting, and bouts in the gym space the company included as part of its facility in Miami. Paul Miller was his oftentime opponent on the mats. Slender, pale-eyed, red-haired Miller might have been Rippner's put-through-the-wash fraternal twin, his build similar to Rippner's compact, wiry frame, his late hours-- as one of the company's chief security programmers-- similar to Rippner's, too.

They'd usually spar in the dead hours just before dawn. In terms of the Keefe job and its planning timeline, this was when Lisa Reisert, having wandered out to her kitchen for post-midnight eggs or some other snack, was now back in bed. (Rippner, quietly detail-obsessed, noted the some-others: if she wasn't eating eggs at three a.m., Miss Reisert was most apt to be toasting pre-packaged waffles [generics, never Eggos: Rippner found that oddly amusing until, out of curiosity, he tried the generics and discovered that they were far less like cardboard than their Kellogg counterparts]. He noted, too, how she always re-flossed and re-brushed her teeth before she went back to bed, a fact he might have found smirk-worthy were it not something he himself did.) Even if Miller hadn't been reading tension in Rippner, even if he couldn't see that Rippner, just possibly, was spending a minute or two longer on the details comprising the Keefe affair than the mission might actually warrant, Paul was available in those pre-dawn hours before Rippner went back to his hotel for a few hours' sleep, he was neutral-enough company, and he wasn't a half-bad fighter. Truth to tell, he could visualize a fight with the best of them. Rippner could see that.

The problem was, Miller found it difficult to channel violence toward other human beings.

Had he attempted a career like Rippner's, as a situations manager, this difficulty would have led, in the field, to a most fatal hesitation. When the stakes were less than lethal, however, Miller proved himself to be a quick, creative opponent. So quick, in fact, and so insidious that Rippner nicknamed him "Octopus." Actually, he'd said, grimacing as he got up off the mat, "You've got more arms than a fucking octopus," but Miller had construed the grimace as a grin and the comment as a joke, and he'd smiled, obviously pleased at having gotten the drop on an employee from one of the company's most dangerous echelons.

Rippner let him smile and, more than that, half-smiled absently in return (honest to God, his head was buzzing with the Keefe job on top of the fall he'd just taken, and he was hopped up on caffeine and exhaustion besides), and that half-smile was, likely more than anything else, what led to a minor misreading on Miller's part: that kiss in the shower.

They were all alone in the stalls. Four to the white-tiled room. Rippner took one, Miller took another. Laid out their clothes on the room's center bench, hung their towels. Rippner was standing with his eyes closed, letting the water pelt down on the back of his neck, when he heard Miller's shower shut off. He alerted to the sound, much as he alerted to any change in his environment. No sounds of a scuffle. Nothing suspicious. He relaxed again.

Behind him, Miller said: "Rippner."

"Yeah--?" He opened his eyes, blinked away water as he turned.

Miller was nude. He put his hand against Rippner's neck and kissed him on the mouth.

Despite the shock of it, Rippner stood without tensing. When their lips parted, he looked Miller in the eye.

"No," he said. "I'm flattered, Paul, but no."

Miller took a step back. The water was still beating down between Rippner's shoulder blades.

"Got that much out of you, anyway," Miller said softly. His eyes wandered Rippner's body. Rippner let him have that, too. "And I'm still alive," Miller added, a trace of wonder in his voice.

"Wouldn't have you any other way, Paul."

"A kiss is just a kiss, right?" Miller met his eyes. He smiled. "You blue-eyed devil."

He left the stall. Rippner shut off the water, dried himself, dressed. He and Miller left the building together, went their separate ways home.

He spent a certain amount of time that morning, as he watched the dawn light drive shadow across the ceiling of his Miami hotel room, evaluating his reaction to Miller's advances. Rippner had felt no desire to sodomize Miller, or to be sodomized by him, but he'd felt no desire to hurt him, either. And not only as a Doberman that hadn't heard its attack command: he honestly felt no malice toward the man. Later, much later, after the Keefe affair had (messily, noisily, and painfully) settled, after he'd spent time in the hospital and briefly in prison, after airline monsters and bagels and ice-storm neurotoxins, he would feel a need, almost, to apologize: _You weren't the one, Lise. You weren't the one to make me realize I'm still alive_.

Not that being with her hadn't refined the idea, made it acceptable, even very, very good.

_Being human has its privileges,_ as John Carter, his boss, the company's most-respected ghoul-tender, might say.

* * *

It only made sense that he should come down for a few days while they planned their trip to the U.K. Neither of them liked playing phone-tag; e-mail was too clumsy. (These were the things they told themselves.) Miami was warm; grinding through the last, dirty months of the type of winter that seemed to put the lie to the concept of global warming, Chiccago, most emphatically, was not. It only made sense, too, that he should bunk at her place. All he had to do was pack a bag and his laptop and go. He could download his training files from the company's secure website when he arrived and erase those files again before he headed home. Why waste money on a hotel room when chances were better than good that he'd only end up bedding down with her every night anyway? Sharing space was a test for them as well, though neither of them precisely identified it as such. Lisa came closest when she mused one morning, over English muffins and grapefruit juice at the kitchen counter, whether they should book one room or two at the Aldwych.

"One room would save money," Rippner said, wondering why, for the first time in maybe a quarter of a century, he suddenly felt shy.

"Look into it today, okay?" She finished her juice, then came over and slid her last muffin-half onto his plate. Rippner, seated at the kitchen table with his laptop open in front of him, looked up at her.

"Will do, boss-lady."

Lisa leaned down, kissed him on the lips. "Don't trash the place. I'll be home at six."

He could see the blush on her cheeks. "Okay."

* * *

She gave him her spare key and the code for the security panel. An odd feeling, oddly touching: possibly the most intimate thing she'd ever done for him. Whatever she'd perpetrated on him in bed-- hell, in the shower, on the sofa, pushed up against the kitchen counter-- had nothing on her placing that piece of metal on his palm. This wasn't hormonal, this wasn't lust: it was sense and logic: he needed to be able to come and go while she was at work. He didn't say, "Not as if I couldn't get in without a key.": he could see her thinking it. Like him, and ever the picture of manners, she was gracious enough not to say it out loud.

While she was at the Lux, he'd work on his training files, straighten up a bit, throw in a load of laundry. He'd do long sets of pushups or crunches or go out running. He ventured once all the way to the beach, but the day was too clear, too sky-blue and sunny. Too much of a contrast to the gray light and cold he'd left in Chicago. He'd traveled, of course, as part of his work; he'd seen his share of tropical or semi-tropical paradises. Here, however, he felt absolutely exposed. He wondered if he might have felt differently if Lisa were running with him.

* * *

When she got home, they'd tell one another about the day they'd had.

"I saw part of a Lifetime movie today," he told her, watching her shrug out of the jacket top she'd worn to work and make a beeline for the bedroom. Every night-- he knew this from _before_-- the heels and businesswear came off the second the door was locked behind her. And now, still, he never watched while she changed. (She'd emerge, in two minutes or less, dressed in a t-shirt and old jeans.) He called toward the open bedroom door: "Sort of a penance, I guess."

"I'll say."

"I learned something from it, though."

She came out. Jeans, as foreseen. A worn garment-dyed green t-shirt. She finished freeing her hair from the collar. "What did you learn?"

"When things don't work out in a relationship, it's because people are afraid to talk. They don't want to seem weak or trivial."

She heard that without laughing. Her eyes went a shade more gray: she was listening seriously, even if her dimples were in evidence. He liked her dimples. "It's the little things, you mean."

"Yes. You know how ecosystems are built on micro-organisms? Relationships are built on the same kinds of things."

"So relationships are built on algae?"

He kept his face very sober. "And plankton. Sea monkeys."

Now she laughed outright. He joined her. She started-- he felt only he would have noticed it, and that gave him a sense of pleasure: she still found his laughing a surprise. And of all the things he didn't mind about rediscovering his humanity, her laughing at him was near the top of the list. He liked her laugh nearly as much as he liked her dimples, and, as his therapist pointed out, Lisa wasn't laughing to insult him or make him angry. (Actually, he'd been proud to realize that on his own.)

"All of this-- not just the programming, the transfer: it's like learning a new language," he said. Lisa had quieted. She was watching his face so very closely, yet she wasn't staring: her eyes were simply doing what human eyes were meant to do, taking in details by the tiny thousands and relaying them to her brain. A million rays of light bouncing between his skin and her retinas, contact intangible but real. Like her eyes were bathing his face in light. "New words, new gestures, new behaviors: when I internalize them, I'll be able to express myself."

Lisa brushed knuckles against his cheek. "I think you're doing a fine job expressing yourself."

* * *

She suggested later, after their workout and dinner, after they'd had their daily run at planning for London, that they watch a decent flick to make up for the travesty he'd suffered through earlier. Rippner, comfortably sore, showered, and fed, let her pick something from the collection of classics on the dark shelves flanking her T.V.

He didn't tell her that night, but he didn't trust films. Misdirection, guided vision. He always found himself paying more attention to the scenery, the background characters. He thus studied the main action obliquely. Fighting the direction. Admittedly, he didn't mind watching movies, especially lying-- as he found himself twenty minutes later-- with his head in Lisa's lap while she fed him popcorn, but he knew that he and she approached film differently. Some of those golden-age directors, he thought-- Huston, Curtiz, Cukor, Wilder, Hawks-- would have made fine managers. They could make you see exactly what they wanted you to see without you realizing it. Similarly, in the field, you could find yourself manipulated or murdered without ever knowing what had happened. Modern directors, in contrast-- Fincher, Boyle, even the acknowledged greats like Coppola, Scorsese, and Scott-- were too busy putting their personal stamp on their projects. Visual tricks that were too obvious. He laughed in sudden delight, watching as Michael Curtiz had Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains walk right through the wall of Rick's office in tonight's canonical apology for the sins of the Lifetime Channel, _Casablanca_. He looked up at Lisa--

"See what just happened there, Lise?"

-- and she laughed too, then. "I never noticed that."

He counterbalanced his suspicion of cinema with a love of books, platonic and simple. Nothing moved in a book. The only motion was in his mind. The words stayed where they were on the page. He didn't have to _track_ anything. Films were, in contrast, compositions in motion. He wasn't by nature paranoid, or any more paranoid than the strictures of his work required, but he was by training an assessor and manipulator of situations and people. When he was reading, he could shut that part of himself off.

Not that he was suffering. The fingers that had fed him popcorn were now absently rubbing his chest. Rippner relaxed beneath the caress, his own fingers brushing Lisa's wrist, while they watched Rick Blaine rediscover his lost soul.

* * *

Ironic, maybe, given his lifelong contempt for team athletics, that two of the most revelatory moments of his adult life were linked to the gym. First with Paul Miller. Then with Lisa. On his third day in Miami, she knocked him out.

They found themselves, following her Wednesday shift at the Lux, at the gym, on a sparring mat. She'd had her share of self-defense courses, but he wanted her to know more. She wanted to learn. That evening, she landed a chance right hook square on the point of his chin, and the world tipped and went black.

He came to in the center of a circle of people, flat on his back, with his head in Lisa's lap.

"Good shot," he mumbled. He felt as though his mouth were full of rocks.

"Never thought you'd have a glass jaw."

Through the hot-wool muzziness thrumming from his chin to his temples, he wanted her to know he wasn't mad. More than anything, he wanted her to know that. Despite her joke, he could see she was trying not to cry. But it wasn't out of fear of him.

* * *

She was afraid of herself. Of what she felt. Old hatreds, old hurts, mixing with more recent ones. Some of which had been inflicted on her by the man lying stunned on the ground before her.

* * *

Rippner persuaded the club management not to call for an ambulance. He signed papers, disclaimers of liability, an insurance form. Lisa was quiet all the way home. They picked up Thai takeout; she barely touched her food. He asked her, after evening wore into night:

"Should I sleep on the couch tonight?"

"No." She looked past his left ear, replying. "I want you with me."

He expected her to keep to her side of the bed, facing away. Once he settled back, though, she eased close and laid her head against his chest. He held her in his arms. He caught her scent and felt a twinge of arousal, but she was already relaxing against him, her breathing going slow and deep, and that, tonight, was what he really wanted.

* * *

He woke up alone, still on his back. The room was shadow-dark, urban dark. In the age of sodium lighting, there was no such thing as perfect blackness. Life as a poorly compressed film file on a cheap DVD. The clock in red told him: 2:48.

No light from under the bathroom door. He sat up, swung his legs off the bed, stood. Years of habit: he walked to the side of the open bedroom door without crossing in front of it, listened.

No sound from the apartment. He looked out. Light from the kitchen, weak and pale and utilitarian. He padded out across the living area.

Lisa was standing looking into the open refrigerator. She didn't turn as he leaned into the frame of the kitchen door. She was wearing light cotton lounging pants and a long t-shirt; she was absently fingering the fabric between her collarbone and left breast. Over her scar. In the sterile glow from the refrigerator, her eyes were shiny with tears.

"Lisa--?"

She didn't start. She swayed slightly on her feet, as though the sound had nudged her. Reed-like on her slender, long legs. Rippner came closer.

"Memories?" he asked.

She nodded. Rippner went to stand beside her. After a time, he reached out and gently rubbed her back. He felt the warmth of her skin through the soft cotton of the t-shirt, the life in her a sort of translucence beneath his fingers. The shift and give of a living body. He was still unaccustomed to thinking of touch not in terms of violence but in terms of comfort, of tenderness. Lisa edged closer, then turned to him, and he took her in his arms and held her close. He'd never seen her tears, watching her from outside, before the Keefe mission, before their meeting had been mutual. He hadn't considered himself a monster then, only a man doing his job, even if, in doing that job, he'd run right up to the borderline between thoroughness and obsession. And now he was the one she trusted. No irony there, no psychosis, simply a sad fact: for all her outward, dayside poise, she was lonely and damaged, and, for better or for worse, he knew her better than anyone else. So he was the one to whom she found it easiest to turn. Not contemptible on her part: sensible. She knew his capacity for harm; he'd never again surprise her there--

His chest ached: an abrupt, awful sadness. Part of him stood back analytically-- _Is this regret?_

He squeezed her, his cheek against her hair, his eyes watchful (this, again, automatically: his monitoring of the shadows all around them)--

Then he realized something: he'd never seen her reach for the phone during these kitchen raids. He said to the darkness past her head: "You have to be brave for your dad, don't you?"

"He needs to know I'm okay."

"Are you?"

"Yeah. Most of the time. Only sometimes, late at night, I get--"

She stopped speaking. She pressed herself closer to him.

"How do you like your eggs?" Rippner asked.

"You've watched me, Jackson; you should know--" She caught herself, stopped. He felt her tense. He held on to her, gently.

"I'm asking how you _like_ your eggs, baby."

"Over medium. But they never seem to work out--" She drew back slightly, looked at him, mild puzzlement mixing with the sadness on her face. "Why--?"

He smiled, reached to switch on the kitchen light. "Have a seat."

* * *

When he'd first seen her scar, those many months back, he knew he'd won.

Not the contest between them, no: not the scenario aboard the plane, even though the scar contributed there. There it was merely a tool for keeping her off-balance-- "So that's how it's going to be--?"-- as if her lying to him could possibly matter to him personally. No: she felt _guilt_ at lying to him (a complete stranger! And a stranger who, by all appearances, meant her harm-- How insidiously we're programmed to be polite!); that guilt was a momentary weakness; he'd used it to manipulate her. All part of the fight, a move that, for the moment, she couldn't quite counter.

No: when he saw the scar he knew her strength. That it was tested and true. He might kill her, but he would never break her. He might beat her, assault her sexually, and it would be nothing but redundant to her. Do your worst, Jackson, and she'll feel nothing but contempt: _it's already been done_.

He wanted, for a second, there in that cramped Boeing lavatory, before revulsion kicked in (he found the idea of sexual abuse sickening), to thank the man who'd done this to her: the assault had forged power in her, fearlessness, even if she, at this moment, didn't realize it. (To be fair, at that exact second, throttling her in an airplane mod-con, he hadn't fully realized it either. Only later, tracheotomized with a cheap novelty ballpoint, did he know just how strong she was.)

He would fantasize, even later than that, about finding the man who'd raped her. Carter could help him: they'd have access to every DNA database in the United States, and these creatures never struck only once. Two scenarios, then: he'd kill the thing, and he'd tell her.

Or not.

And that-- that would become a space between them, a silence.

Or-- scenario two-- he'd bring the creature to her, and, together, they would--

That was even more ridiculous. Where her pride lay was in how she'd managed to endure. She'd moved on; she'd survived; she was very much alive. What was more, she would never stoop to torture.

Nor would he.

Torture wasn't repugnant to Rippner. It was simply pointless. You used a mark, or not; you let that mark live, or you killed it. Torture, as his contacts at the State Department would confirm, was a waste of effort. And Rippner took no pleasure from it. His pleasures, when all was said and done, were almost ridiculously mundane: good food and drink, good music, a good run, a good workout, good sex. The satisfaction he felt at completing a mission.

He'd told these things to Alice, his therapist at the company, short, square-built Alice with her straight short brown hair and matching serious bespectacled brown eyes; she seemed pleased.

* * *

He tried to remember, as Lisa pulled out a chair for herself at the oval oak dining table, as he mustered the eggs and butter, the old-style iron frying pan and the beige stoneware plates, when he went from telling her things he wanted her to know to telling her things he needed her to know. He tried to remember when he went to needing _her_. A miserable word in itself, _need_, but there it was. Not as he needed air or water, of course-- he wasn't that far gone. Maybe her generosity in bed had triggered it. In terms of sex, she was becoming utterly fearless, completely giving. He found himself emulating her. Maybe it was how she looked first thing in the morning, tousled and makeup-free (not that she wore much makeup in any case), each tiny flaw in her skin serving only to draw him that much closer to her.

Perhaps it was because she now had him off-balance. They'd begun their relationship as antagonists; they'd seen one another at their very worst. Now they were moving backwards, in a way, toward happiness. Or, with less syrup, toward a mutual contentment. There: contentment. A concept he could accept.

* * *

And one he could identify with in concrete terms, watching the butter spit and spatter in the heavy black pan as he cooked eggs for her at three a.m.

* * *

Two fried eggs, their tops ever so lightly browned, their yolks firm but yielding and clouded to yellowish-pink, on one of the stoneware plates. Glasses of water, a half-pot of coffee. Neither of them lost sleep because of caffeine. Enough toast for both of them. Butter and jam. He took a seat across from her, and Lisa asked, as she reached for the pepper:

"Where did you learn how to cook eggs?"

"Ore boat."

She smiled. "What--?"

"Spring. I was just short of sixteen. I ran away and joined the crew of an ore boat. Ended up as cook's assistant. Dory'd want to sleep in, and I'd get stuck making breakfast. Those guys eat like kings, and they're mighty fussy about their eggs."

"Why did you run away, Jackson?"

He felt himself go still, looking at her. He felt his eyes say--

_None of your business, Lise._

She frowned slightly, then reached for her water glass. "I'm sorry," she said.

He watched her. She was four feet away from him, maybe even less, and he felt the distance growing suddenly, spewing out space between them; he saw himself moving far off, felt himself growing colder--

"It was my dad," he said. Effort there. His throat seemed to close around the words. He reached for his coffee cup, watched his hand shake as he did. "He, uh--"

She set down her glass. He was looking at her less directly than she was looking at him, but something in her expression made his eyes sting. He took a long swallow of coffee, cleared his throat around the bitterness, the heat. Lisa was waiting, patiently, when he met her eyes.

"He died," Rippner said.

* * *

After seeing his son hit the family dog (a genial, slobbery brown Lab-shepherd mix named Moose who, like any good mutt, would eat anything within reach, including, unfortunately for young Jackson Rippner's war-epic playtime plans, the heads off of G.I. Joe action figures), James Rippner took his boy aside. Outside, to be precise. Down the road to the park, where selfsame struck Moose happily ran bounding circles around them in the suburban Chicago sunshine, his ham-pink tongue flapping from his mouth in a dog's dumb grin.

"You'll get far more out of people and animals through patience, Jackson," James said. "Remember that." He whistled Moose over, and he and his serious, slender eight-year-old boy walked on.

* * *

_Remember that_ was James practicing what he preached. It was a warning, too. The first tick in what Jackson and his younger sister--

* * *

-- "Milla?" Lisa asked, interrupting.

Jackson smiled, surprised. "How did you know?"

"'With love, Milla.' It's on the handle of the knife second from the left in the bottom row of the case in your bedroom closet."

"Snoop."

"You said I could. I had it in writing."

"Her name's Camilla. Named for our grandmother on Dad's side. She's off in Switzerland. Assistant to an assistant construction engineer at that new physics research facility at C.E.R.N. They're going to destroy the world, you know," he added, drolly. "With teensy-tiny black holes. She's excited about that."

Lisa chuckled as she spread strawberry jam on a piece of toast. "Are you named for your grandfather, Jackson?"

"Fortunately, no."

"Why fortunately?"

"Igor Stefan Rippner, anyone...?"

"Oh."

"Indeed, 'oh.'"

* * *

He poured coffee, a warmup for himself, a first cup for her.

* * *

-- the first tick (returning, sans "Anyway," and with but brief repetition, to his story) in what James Rippner's children knew as the_ three-count_. He'd never struck them as punishment, but they knew his temper. Jackson remembered seeing him haul through the driver's-side window of a bruised-white Trans Am a teenager who'd been speeding through their neighborhood, past the park, past yards with children out playing. While the kid paused to rev his engine at the stop sign at the corner of the Rippner property, James Rippner barreled across his yard, reached in, got the boy by the arm and neck and dragged him out. The Trans Am was a stick; he reached in, before the boy had a chance to react, and shut off the motor.

By now the kid was thrashing and kicking and swearing. James Rippner was not a large man. His height and build were much the same as those to which his son would grow. But James, like the man his boy would become, was strong for his size. Ever preternaturally so. His was a terrible, steely strength. While Jackson's mother called the police, Jackson, watching wide-eyed from the front steps of their house, saw his father say something to the boy in his grip, very quietly, and the boy went still and remained that way even after the police arrived.

Jackson never knew what it was his father had said. But he could recognize fear when he saw it, even at eight years old.

* * *

"He was shot and killed in a holdup at a Holiday Station Store," Rippner said. "I was ten and a half years old."

* * *

James Rippner worked in programming and support for a technical-publishing firm. He'd been beeped in after-hours to deal with a mainframe meltdown; the next morning, just before dawn, he decided to stop and top off his gas tank before heading home. It was January, and savagely cold, and Ellen Rippner, his wife, Jackson's mom, would be taking his car to work later that day, as hers was laid up with alternator trouble. A clear, bone-dry, midwinter dusk. One of those pre-dawns that was so cold the sky seemed to be flaking: frost glittered in the glare of the overhead lights as he pulled up to the bank of gas pumps.

Or so Rippner imagined it.

James Rippner was standing in line at the till behind a forty-something tall man in a camo jacket and a White Sox bill-cap when the boys walked in. Nineteen years old, parkas black in the black-and-white of the surveillance-cam footage, dark stocking caps. One carrying a thirty-eight, the other a sawed-off shotgun. James Rippner was the one who refused to get on his knees, to lie down on the floor. The surveillance tapes showed the whole thing. He wasn't being defiant. He simply refused to acknowledge the boys with the guns. At trial, the defense counsel laid the lion's share of the blame at James Rippner's feet. Because of him, the lawyer said, four people-- the man in the White Sox cap, two clerks, Rippner himself-- were dead.

But their killers were facing death by lethal injection. And that, thought Jackson Rippner, through the stone-calm distance of unresolved grief, was a good thing. A crime spree, a pattern of chaos: stopped.

* * *

"Two years after the trial," he said, "their sentences were commuted to natural life. Part of this huge amnesty pending the review of the constitutionality of Illinois's death-penalty statute. All those fuckers on death row whining about Eighth Amendment violations. Saints and fucking martyrs--"

He started to go hoarse. He paused, reached for his water. Lisa stayed quiet, her eyes on him, while he drank.

"I couldn't accept it," Rippner said. "I wanted them dead. I could accept it-- I could accept him being dead if I knew they were going to die, too. This, though-- That winter-- I was fifteen-- it was like the cold got inside me and put down roots. I started cutting school, staying out all night. I stole shit. Liquor, mostly. I got in fights. I got the shit beat out of me, Lise. Not because I couldn't've won, but because I wanted to see how much I could take and still not feel anything. Mid-April, when the ice was coming off the shipping lanes on Michigan, I went down to the docks and walked on board that ore boat. They were short-handed. Captain was this big German guy from Wisconsin. Said if it turned out I was absconding from juvie, he'd throw me overboard a hundred miles from shore. But I wasn't." He smiled slightly. "And so I learned to fix eggs. Fried, scrambled, poached. Cheddar omelets. Eggs benedict. Those guys were nuts for eggs benedict. All the fat on the menus, it's a wonder those boats don't snap in half more often than they do."

* * *

She'd long since finished her over-easies; together, they'd finished the toast. Lisa rose as Rippner did, cleared her share of the plates.

"Did your mother ever remarry?" she asked.

"No." Rippner brushed crumbs into the waste basket. "I know she loved Dad, but when it comes to intimacy in general, I think she can take it or leave it. So she pretty much leaves it."

Lisa rinsed a plate, set it in the sink. "Where is she now?"

"Working for an architectural firm in New York." Rippner squeezed dish soap into the frying pan, then brimmed it with water and set it to soak. He turned to Lisa. "And so, being the one who made the most desperate attempt to escape the Windy City, I was the one who ended up staying. Not that I haven't done plenty of traveling."

"Does she know what you do for a living?"

It was a brave question, but she kept her voice steady. He didn't hesitate replying.

"Yes."

Lisa turned the last plate slowly beneath a thin stream of tapwater. "Does she know about us?"

"So we're an 'us' now."

"Of course we are."

She set the plate in the sink, levered off the water and dried her hands, and turned to him. She hadn't said anything by way of condolence with regard to his father; he stood watching her as she watched him, mutually embarked: a moment of silence balanced between them. Her expression said she knew that he considered her sympathy or her vocalization of it unnecessary, either or both; that recognition coming in such close proximity to the one word-- "us"-- sent his heartrate heavenward. He knew, in turn, that when she was deeply serious, her eyes were far more gray than blue. Midlake on Michigan on a cool spring evening: that's how they looked now.

"Not yet she doesn't."

His phrasing seemed to please her. Though her eyes stayed thoughtful, she smiled. "I could hire you as my cook."

Rippner smiled back. "Is that all...?"

Lisa lightly fingered his t-shirt just above the waistband of his boxer-briefs, and Rippner, in frank relief, gave himself over to the twinges of earlier. "Why, what other services do you offer, Mr. Rippner?" she asked.

* * *

That same morning, nearer sunrise, he watched as she disentangled herself from him and sat up. She'd been lying half across him, and sometime in the night's last hours he'd pulled the better part of the bed's flat sheet across her back, so in rising she left him effectively exposed. Rippner, sprawled in lingering post-coital satisfaction in the early morning light, lay gazing at her. She sat at the edge of the bed looking back at him.

She smiled. "Don't tempt me." Her eyes left his, went to his throat, his chest. To his belly, then lower still. The urge to touch her again was nearly overwhelming. "I'm running late as it is."

She pulled the sheet across his loins and got up, and then she went off to shower while Rippner half-sank back into a contented doze. He watched her dress. His personal prohibitions regarding her privacy didn't apply when he actually was in her bedroom. If she wanted him out, she was certainly free to say so. She chose a suit-dress in deep teal blue. Business demure. A style and cut flattering to her curves, the coltish, lean lengths of her, the fabric practical and modest, the color a perfect contrast to her auburn hair. The doorbell rang while she was drifting between the bedroom and the bathroom, taming her shoulder-length curls. Rippner roused himself. He pulled on his boxers, plucked his t-shirt off the floor next to the bed, shook it out as he left the bedroom and crossed the living area.

"I'll get it," he called over his shoulder.

"Thanks, sweetie," Lisa called back.

Rippner smiled to himself, pulling on his shirt. He checked the peephole.

It was Joe Reisert.

_Time to be a man, _Rippner thought. He took a deep breath and opened the door.

Reisert, obviously, was surprised. He looked, then scowled, at Rippner. He didn't quite recognize the man in front of him; that much seemed plain. From his expression, he knew, for the moment, only that Rippner _was_ a man, in undershorts and a t-shirt, in his daughter's apartment early in the morning. Since they last saw one another, Rippner had had his hair cut. In Miami, he'd gotten some sun. At this hour of the morning, he was in need of a shave.

"Good morning, Mr. Reisert," he said politely.

Realization crossed Reisert's craggy face like an illuminating wall of flame. He launched a fist like a headache ball at Rippner's jaw. Watching, as it were, from a sudden martyrlike distance, Rippner made no effort to duck. When the blow landed, he felt as though the entire room had shifted twelve feet to the left and the kitchen wall, with the entire weight of the apartment building behind it, had caught him in the skull.

"Lisa--!" Reisert shouted.

With his head-bones pulsing, Rippner let Reisert get him by the throat. And Reisert knew what he was doing. He pulled backward, hauling Rippner off-balance, and Rippner's hands reached instinctively for the forearm across his throat, trying to protect his neck--

"Stand still, or I'll break you in half," Reisert growled. "Lisa--!"

"I might let you," Rippner rasped. Reisert had awakened the old injury to his vocal cords. He reached, repositioned the man's hands. "There. All you have to do is lean, Joe."

Lisa ran in and stopped, appalled, just inside the doorframe between the kitchen and the living area. "Dad--!"

"What has he done to you, honey?"

"In general?" Rippner couldn't help it. "The specifics might be embarrassing--"

Joe applied more pressure. Rippner went quiet.

Humility is not to be made weak: it is to surrender to another's rightful feelings. Reisert's anger was justified. All part of Rippner's re-humanification: perhaps the idea was an offshoot of the early stages of hypoxia, but Rippner, from a distance away, watching himself being strangled, thought he saw sense in it.

Reisert persisted: "This murderer, Lisa, this criminal: what is he doing here--?"

Rippner countered, gasping: "With your own eyes, Mr. Reisert: how many people have you seen me kill? How many?"

Lisa's expression was caught between uncertainty, panic, and shock. Her right hand reached unconsciously out, toward them; her feet stayed where they were. "He works for the government, Dad--"

Reisert looked from his daughter to the wiry young man he was throttling. "You're a secret agent--?"

"Yes," Rippner croaked. Still not resisting, still not fighting back. "In a manner of speaking--"

Reisert snorted. "Pull the other one, pal."

"Dad, please--" Lisa said.

Rippner couldn't see Reisert's face, but he could feel the anger in the man's breathing, the heavy, powerful shift in his torso, the strength in his arms and hands. He could see Reisert's expression refracted in Lisa's. Reisert released him.

"What the fuck is he doing here, Lisa?"

"That's about half of it," Rippner muttered, straightening, massaging his throat. Again, he couldn't help himself. He never thought of himself as suicidal, but sometimes he sensed almost an urge to call grief down on his head.

"Jackson--!" Lisa snapped.

He started. Stared at her and froze. So did Reisert-- in the second before he took out a cell phone and said, "I'm calling the police."

"Put that away, Dad," Lisa said. "_Now_--!"

She wasn't asking. Reisert paused, his thumb over the keypad. Then he closed his phone and meekly put the thing back in his shirt pocket and stood as quietly as the young man in skivvies beside him while his daughter looked at the two of them with eyes the color of bayonet steel and chose her next words:

"What are you doing here, Dad?"

Rippner, watching her, waiting for Reisert to reply, wanted to think her anger wasn't solely at or over him, over embarrassment at the company her father had found her keeping. He wanted to believe she could protest Reisert's disappointment, the scowl on the man's face. He thought he saw her relax slightly, an easing through her shoulders.

"I just, umm-- I was on my way for a round of golf, and I was wondering if you'd care to go for breakfast, honey."

"I'm running a little late, Dad." Lisa's voice softened. "Why don't we meet for dinner later?"

Reisert glanced at Rippner. "'We'--?"

"The three of us." Quiet authority in her tone. "How about Bardo's? You can get us a table."

"I don't--" Reisert looked again at his daughter. Something akin to numb resignation was beginning to replace his frown. "Eight o' clock?"

"We'll meet you there." Lisa crossed to them. She put a hand on her father's chest, leaned up, and kissed him on the cheek. "I'm running late, Dad. I've got to go to work. See you later, okay?"

"Okay, honey. Eight o' clock." He returned the kiss. Before he turned to go, he looked at Rippner. "Mr. Rippner."

"Mr. Reisert."

Joe left.

* * *

All that day, Rippner wondered if she was fighting as much of an urge to call him as he was to call her. He kept clear of the phone, and it never rang, not once, all afternoon. He went out for a long, hard run, and when he came back, and all through his shower, there were no messages. He studied his training files with fierce, cold concentration. At six-oh-eight, Lisa came in quietly, hung her keys, set her purse on the kitchen counter. Then Rippner sat beside her on the sofa while she reached gently to touch his latest bruise.

"Why did you let him hit you?" she asked.

"Who's to say he didn't get in a lucky shot?"

She didn't smile. This wasn't her customer-service face. The stillness in her expression reminded him of old newsreel footage he'd seen once of Soviet soldiers standing on review before Josef Stalin. Stoicism before a madman. The hope that maybe, just maybe, the monster would simply pass by.

"A sociopath is sleeping with his daughter," he said. "One good punch: he deserved that much, at least. Don't you think?"

"How many people have you killed, Jackson?"

"With my own hands?"

"Yes."

"Nine that I know of."

"Were any of them in self-defense?"

"Yes. The rest were according to plan."

"And that makes it alright."

"No. That makes it according to plan. I wasn't acting out of impulse."

"Who makes plans like that?"

"I repulse you, don't I?"

"I'm trying to understand you, Jackson."

"You're patronizing me."

"'Understanding' equals 'patronizing'--?"

"Bad enough, isn't it? Bad enough you could snap your fucking fingers, and Carter would have me killed--"

"Bad for me or for you--?"

"How the fuck would it be bad for you?"

"God, you really are thick, aren't you?"

Like a flare inside him. An arc welder in his heart. He saw the motion in his mind, he felt himself tense in preparation: an open palm across her face, sharp and stinging, and then her head in his hands, the fingers of one hand tangled in her hair while the palm of the other hand cupped itself against her chin. Shock in her staring eyes. And one good, hard twist--

_Jesus_--

He hadn't moved to touch her. Not an inch. He calmed himself. She was looking at him, her eyes and face as unreadable as stone.

"You know as well as I do that you could kill me ten times over before I could call Carter," she said. "You probably even know I don't have his number on speed dial."

"And I know, even if you don't, that he's a man of his word, Lisa. If you were dead, and I was the one who killed you, he wouldn't have me hunted down: he'd do it himself."

"How do you know, Jackson--? How do you know he wasn't just feeding me a line to make me feel safe around you?"

Rippner ignored the implications-- _she doesn't feel safe around me; I make her feel threatened;_ he said: "I've seen him do it. I was his backup once, when--"

He stopped. In her face he saw weariness more than anger or fear. More likely than not, she'd been dealing all day with demanding assholes, that much following the scene this morning with her father, and now she'd come home to another rectal ego-case. This one with bonus psychoses.

"I'm making you unhappy," he said. "I should go."

"Jackson." A tender reworking of the image in his mind: before he could get up, she reached out and laid her palm against his cheek. "People can argue and still lo-- like each other. Don't go. Stay here. Please."

He settled himself with her on the sofa. The room was darkening, but they didn't reach for the lights. Lisa relaxed against him.

"You wouldn't be human if you didn't resent Carter giving me your killswitch," she said.

"Is that good?"

"Yes."

"Anyway, I'll be gone in six months."

He felt her tense. "Where are you going?"

"Once my probation is up, you won't have to worry about seeing me again."

"But--"

"Don't tell me you'd miss me."

"Alright, I won't tell you. I'll let you figure it out for yourself."

Rippner smiled at the growing dusk. "We should get ready for dinner. Don't want to be late for your dad."

* * *

He disliked neckties. Not that wearing one hurt the scar at his throat, no, only the fact that a Windsor knot always seemed like an open invitation: _throttle me, please._ It was a knit tie in sliding shades of blue and purple, and Lisa knotted it for him while he stood very still and more nervous than he cared to be. His shirt was a very pale blue; he'd thought to pack a summer suit, a textured cotton-silk in black. Lisa wore a one-piece dress in deep greenish-gold, a crinkled soft fabric, light and shadow playing within hundreds of tiny crevices when she moved. A modest, straight neckline, a dark knit sash at her hips. At seven fifty-three, they lucked into a curbside parking spot less than a block from the restaurant; Lisa swung her silver Taurus SEL into it with the casual panache of a rodeo rider putting a barrel pony through its paces. No stereotyped young-businesswoman Camry or Civic for her: obviously she'd listened to her dad in terms of things automotive and ended up with a good old-fashioned American tank that still had plenty to say when it came to sleek style, economy, and power. Not to mention, the thing had a trunk the size of a Manhattan studio apartment.

_Which will be more room than I'll need, _Rippner thought, unbuckling his seatbelt and getting out, _if I manage to make her mad tonight._

His thoughts altered abruptly when she joined him on the sidewalk. It was a clear night, the stars directly overhead diamond-sharp and precise, and yet a deep royal blue lingered in the horizon at the street's western end. The air was warm without being humid; the breeze carried a hint of flowers, of scented things growing. Lisa turned her head, putting her keys in her purse, and in that moment, Rippner found himself staring, transfixed, at the line of her jaw, the hollow, the joining-point, just below her right ear. She wore no earrings. She had her hair up tonight; her neck was exposed.

"Lisa," he heard himself say.

"What, Jackson?"

She looked at him, amiable, expectant. The breeze ruffled a feathering of hair errant near her left ear. He could feel the stars overhead like eyes or scopes watching him through light a billion brilliant years in the traveling.

"There's something I want to--" He paused, frowning. His thoughts and his larynx weren't coordinating with one another. His heart seemed to be getting in the way. "Something I, umm, want you to know--"

"Tell me."

She was looking up at him, that ever-so-slight _up__,_ and she'd moved closer to him, or he'd moved closer to her, and he could feel her even though they weren't touching, as though that breeze were brushing them one to another, the gentlest of electrical currents passing between her body and his. Rippner found himself swallowing a mouthful of heartbeats.

He said: "You look very beautiful tonight."

A flicker in the blue of her eyes. Though what he'd just said was absolutely sincere, and in his heart perfectly true, she'd caught him in a lie. She smiled, and blushed slightly, and in seeing her cheeks color he knew: she'd heard the words he _hadn't_ said.

"You don't look half-bad yourself, Mr. Rippner," she replied. She took his hand as they walked to Bardo's, and Rippner felt his own cheeks warm, too, pleasantly, in the balmy Miami night.

* * *

Joe Reisert was waiting for them at the restaurant's bar. He was wearing a pale gray shirt and a darker gray sportcoat, and he had about him the look of a man who had taken the lay of the land and who, though not comfortable with said lay, could see options, exit strategies. Though the thought that Lisa's father might be ex-Secret Forces seemed too much of a cliche, if not a stretch (if nothing else, the guys in Information Services had certainly dropped the ball in not letting him know, back when the Keefe mission was in the planning stages), Rippner found himself wondering if Joe Reisert might have served with some distinction in the military. He thought he could read a hint of Marine steel, not just a father's justifiable suspicion, in the man's dark-eyed stare.

"Sir," he said, offering Reisert his hand.

Reisert took it. A firm, no-nonsense handshake. "Mr. Rippner."

A whiff of alcohol. Subtle. Rippner nearly smiled; he relaxed slightly. Not at all in the knowledge that Reisert was impaired, no, but in knowing that the man was willing to give the meeting a chance: he'd had one-- a shot of Johnny Walker or something in the same taxonomic region, by the smell of it-- to loosen up.

"Hi, Dad." Lisa leaned in, kissed Reisert's cheek. "Sorry we're late."

"No, honey, you're right on time. I was early."

"Do we have a table?"

"Yeah. Right this way." He stepped aside, gestured her ahead. Lisa eased past him, pointed in the direction of an empty table against the restaurant's far wall. She seemed completely relaxed.

Bardo's was a mixture of old world and new. The walls appeared to be stucco textured in gold, the effect that of tapestry, the ceiling high, the lighting low but efficient. The furnishings were mahogany-dark but modern. Clean sharp lines and corners. Watching Lisa walk on ahead of him on the slate-tiled floor, Rippner, now re-acquired as a target by Joe Reisert's pit-black eyes, couldn't help the thought: _God, she's good_.

"After you," said Joe, drily.

Rippner followed his girl. The grid of nerves all across his back and shoulders tensed, step by step by step, for an imaginary shot, a stab, a crack with a sap. As he pulled Lisa's chair back for her, he chanced a glance and saw satisfaction warming Reisert's eyes: Reisert was reading him as much as he was reading Reisert, and he'd seen the nervous tremor down Rippner's forearms as he reached for Lisa's chairback.

The cool-eyed, noncommital stare, the poise. Her customer-service face. He was seeing it on both sides of the table. _Now I know where she got it from,_ Rippner thought, as he sat down.

* * *

Still, he managed to enjoy his dinner. It was a fusion menu, which Rippner, not being a culinary expert, interpreted to mean "all over the map." Lisa ordered a mojito and tilapia with a mango salsa. Rippner ordered a mojito as well, then picked a dish with beef and vegetables and what turned out to be a truly volcanic light sauce. He was pleased. The comfort of endorphins: he always found spicy food relaxing.

So he was less tense when Reisert finally asked: "What are your intentions toward Lisa?"

"Do you ask all of her friends that question, Joe?"

"No. Only the ones who've been convicted of federal crimes."

Lisa's face remained neutral as her shoulders tensed. Rippner settled back in his chair.

"Lisa and I-- as I've just said-- are friends. As you may have gathered from the scene this morning, we're on intimate terms. We trust one another. I have no intention of causing her harm. As you can see-- I've seen you watching her eyes, sir-- she's not drugged. She's relatively relaxed and very healthy. Beyond enjoying one another's company, we have at present no long-term plans. I hope you find that satisfactory."

Reisert said: "It's a bit much to swallow, you have to understand that."

"Of course."

"Common sense dictates you should be spending the next several decades in prison. You can see that, can't you? It's only right, given the shit you've pulled. You or those people you work for. Your story makes sense, Rippner, but it doesn't make you seem like any less of a rule-bending, sneaky son of a bitch."

Rippner sipped his water. "You served in the military, Mr. Reisert: am I right?"

"Yes."

"Vietnam?"

"Air Cav."

"When you flew a mission, were you aware of every bit of intel all the way up the chain of command?"

"Of course not."

Rippner put his elbows on the table, thatched his fingertips, leaned a bit closer to Reisert. "Nor was I. But I did my job."

"Your job seems an awfully lot like terrorism, Mr. Rippner."

Rippner dropped his voice, asked, conspiratorial: "Ever blow anything up while you were in 'Nam, Joe?"

Reisert bristled. "That's not--"

"Ever bomb a village, for instance?"

"You attacked American property on American soil. There's a difference."

"The largely evacuated top floor of a hotel. Well, what if it had played out like this: Keefe's original suite also faced the ocean. Midway up the building. Nice view. What if I hadn't asked Lisa to make the call to change Keefe's room? What if we had kept him and his family right where they were?"

"An explosion halfway up--" Lisa spoke, stopped. "You would have destroyed the Lux."

"Not quite. My hired help still would have been the ones firing the rocket-- for that matter, why stop at one? Why not two or three?-- and there's a good chance the place would have stayed standing, but dozens more people would have been injured or killed." He gave Reisert a moment to absorb his words, then continued quietly: "The list of estimated targets that were saved because of the demonstration at the Lux Atlantic would give you nightmares, Mr. Reisert. Money channeled into intel that _saved_ American property. And lives."

Reisert looked at him for a long, thoughtful moment. "At the house-- you got the drop on me. You could have killed me. You didn't."

Rippner sipped his mojito, kept his face neutral.

"Seems like a hell of a way to do business," Reisert said.

Rippner nodded. "Sometimes it is."

"I had a headache for two days, you son of a bitch."

Rippner released roughly a third of a smile. "My apologies, sir."

"And I had a hell of a time getting my insurance company to pony up for the damage to the house."

"That was my fault, Dad," Lisa said. "I was the one who drove an SUV through the front door, remember?"

She looked his way affectionately. Reisert managed to maintain his scowl for maybe another five seconds. He found something to glare at amongst the ice cubes in his water glass.

"That's right," he said. His expression softened. "You were."

Rippner glanced from father to daughter. Lisa was casually returning her attention to her food.

Again Rippner thought, as he picked up his fork: _God, she's good._

"Anyway," he said, "I've been re-evaluating my career options, Mr. Reisert. I figured it might be time for a switch, after the beating the two of you gave me."

"You deserved it," said Reisert.

"I know."

"You're lucky I didn't aim that gun at your head."

"Damn lucky."

"Torso's a better target."

"I quite agree."

Reisert speared a piece of steak. "What will you be doing now--?"

-- _now that you're no longer blowing up hotels?_ He was gracious enough to leave that part unsaid. Rippner ate the rest of his delectable beef-and-vegetable hell-grill while he described for Reisert and Lisa, sans details deemed top-secret, the life of a security-systems specialist. Reisert seemed satisfied, if not pleased. He seemed, too, a little like an employer whose top pick for a premium job had bolted to a rival firm, but that, Rippner thought, was better than out-and-out hostility.

"I'll say it again: your story almost makes sense," Reisert said, once they'd finished their meals, when they were sitting in the nebulous moment between the clearing-away and either the arrival of the check or the temptations of the dessert tray. "And I'll agree: Lisa looks healthy. She doesn't seem to be under duress. She knows-- you do, don't you, honey--?" He put his hand over Lisa's, there on the table. "You give the word, I call the police, and they put him away."

"Dad, you know they won't-- they won't, trust me-- but thank you: it won't won't be necessary."

Reisert looked for a long moment into her eyes.

"I trust you."

His voice caught. For the first time that night, his composure was less than perfect. A crack in the steel. The plating warping on the bulkhead. He reached for his water glass. Rippner looked discreetly Lisa's way. Her eyes met his. A slight smile on her lips. He smiled slightly back.

"So, umm--" Joe Reisert cleared his throat. "-- are you going to give me hell, Lisa Henrietta, if I order dessert with my coffee--?"

Lisa laughed. "Not tonight, Dad, no."

* * *

When the arrival of the check threatened the fragile peace-- that is to say, when the two men in her life bristled again, debating who was to pay-- Lisa Reisert spoke once more in that quiet, reasonable, stainless-steel tone that brooked no debate:

"We'll each pay a third."

She turned her attention to her purse. Rippner and Reisert, exchanging flinty looks, reached, without another word, for their wallets.

* * *

The next night, Rippner's last in Miami, came a test: going out with her gang from work.

"It's my sworn duty to protect Cynthia," Lisa said, shedding her workwear en route to the bedroom.

"How's that?" Rippner asked, saving his work and looking up from his laptop screen. Though he might have preferred to spend their last night alone, a drink out sounded good, too. His head was swimming with computer code; he'd spent too much time indoors today.

"She gets-- mmm, shall we say-- a little too friendly when she's had a few," Lisa called. He could hear clothes rustling, hangers clacking in her bedroom closet. "It's my job to keep her from accepting rides home from every guy she meets."

* * *

The watering hole of choice for the crew of the Lux Atlantic was a place near the hotel called Grover's. Traditional American, trendy without being too upscale. Plenty of niches with tables, bench-seating and chairs, a bar all along the wall to the left on the way in, a stage with a dance floor in front of it. An alt-country-rock outfit was playing when Rippner and Lisa walked in. The sound was good, solid but not overwhelming. Maybe two dozen people were out dancing. Lisa led the way past the bar, through loose knots of people standing off to the side of the dance floor. A picture of red-headed ebullience, Cynthia smiled and waved from a table midway along the back wall. The four other people with her-- two men, two women-- genially made way for Lisa and Rippner.

"You made it!" This, too, from Cynthia, as Jackson and one of the group's guys, a big, broad, muscular, tow-headed kid in a short-sleeved button-down shirt and too-neat jeans, borrowed chairs from an adjacent table.

"Of course we did." Lisa accepted a hug from her co-worker. It appeared as though Cynthia, as foretold, was already well underway in terms of the evening's imbibing. She looked with tipsy stealth at Rippner and mouthed the words to Lisa, once the intros had gone around-- Sara, brunette, mid-thirties, from admin; Bob, knocking fifty, gray at the temples, from accounting; Julie, ash-blonde, compact and wry, from security services; and Jeff, the tow-head, the Lux's junior doorman--

_He's **gorgeous**._

Lisa blushed at the appetizer menu. Rippner, glancing tactfully away, motioned toward a passing waitress. He needed a beer. He suspected Lisa needed one, too.

* * *

Rippner, comfortable in jeans and his blue shirt of the night before, the sleeves rolled midway up his forearms, was taking a long swallow of ice-cold Killian's Irish Red and thinking again that the band wasn't half-bad when a flinch rippled through the group around him.

Beside him, Lisa muttered: "Oh, shit."

Approaching the table was a tall man, early forties. Tan sport coat over a blue polo. Neck and shoulders thick with gym-muscle. The fuzz on his skull looked, Rippner thought, like the bristles of a rusted-red toilet brush. His eyes seemed to be from a face at least two sizes smaller than the one he had. He fixed them on the women at the table as he approached, grinning a grin of blockish teeth, and Bob, in the outer corner chair, gallantly rose to intercept him.

"Eric," he said.

"Bob." The man named Eric crushed Bob's offered hand, then returned his attention to the women at the table. More specifically, he looked directly at Lisa-- and at the stranger in the group's midst. That being Rippner. Who, given the degree of piggish x-ray vision Eric was focusing on Lisa's breasts, through the silk off-white tee she wore, was already doing his civil best not to reach across the table and pull the guy's larynx out.

"Eric," Lisa said, gesturing to Rippner, "this is Jackson Rippner. Jackson, meet our other daytime desk-jockey: Eric Janssen."

Rippner kept his smile cool and steady as Eric tried to pulverize his hand-bones.

* * *

Equally unable to elicit a wince from Lisa's man or to get his Kenmore-esque bulk between her and Jackson, Eric settled for wedging a chair between Cynthia and Jeff instead. Bob and Julie fled to the dance floor. Sara narrowed her world down to the table's plate of nachos and the glass holding her Mai Tai. Which left Jeff. The kid seemed to be shy in direct proportion to the amount of muscle on his big frame. He sat and looked stoically at his beer while Eric pawed Cynthia, who was either too tipsy or not drunk enough to fend him off. Eric, meanwhile, was casting meaningful glances at Lisa--

_This could be you, baby. This **will** be you. If you're lucky._

Roughly four beers later, he excused himself for the restroom. Jackson waited for a five-count after Eric cleared the table, then got up, too.

"Must be contagious." A smile for the gang. "Be right back."

* * *

He and Eric were alone in the gents'. Seeing Rippner come in, the man was good enough to confirm his idiocy immediately with a question:

"What is she, your beard?"

Rippner picked a urinal two away from Eric's. Slightly better than arm's distance between him and the gorilla. "Heartily het, thanks. We fucked in the shower before we came out tonight."

A surprised frown through all the Miller Lite. "I bet."

"Why do you say that?"

"'Cause it's gonna take a whole lot of man to break that dyke."

Rippner moved to the sinks, washed his hands. "And you're going to be that man?"

"Sure as hell wouldn't mind a shot--"

Eric's face mashed against the wall above the urinals. His left arm jerked back in a twist that said _If you move, it **will** break. Trust me._ Rippner pressed stiff fingers into the right side of Eric's back, just above the man's beltline.

"No. No shot. Not ever." He applied more pressure to Eric's lower back, kept his voice barely above a whisper: "They say you can live quite comfortably with only one kidney."

Eric arched in fear and pain.

"And not Cynthia, either," Rippner continued. "Tell you what, Eric: you're not looking so hot. Why don't you call it a night? Let's say I let you go, you finish zipping up your pathetic little alter ego, and you go home and get a good night's sleep. Deal?"

* * *

Two minutes later, Rippner, his hands re-washed, rejoined the Lux crew.

"Where's Eric?" Lisa asked. Rippner smiled. She was trying to sound nonchalant.

"We thought maybe you two had something going on." This from Sara. Possibly One-Mai-Tai-Too-Many Sara, though Rippner thought he detected more a condition-free brightening in her tone. A sort of relief-at-any-cost at not seeing Eric return to the table.

"He tried to feel me up," he said, edging back to his chair. "Had to explain to him that he's not quite my type."

He was unmussed; there were no obvious bloodstains on him. He could feel Lisa's eyes on him as he resettled himself.

"And who _is_ your type?" she asked.

He turned to her-- and kissed her, open-mouthed, right in front of the others. Surprised, Lisa kissed him back. A delighted squeal from Cynthia: "Oh my God--!"

When their lips parted, Rippner kept his eyes on Lisa's. "I'm looking at her right now," he said.

Under the table, she felt him up (and, following that kiss, he _was_ up, no lie), and he didn't mind at all. He drank more of his Killian's as the band launched into something with a big, blood-pulse beat, and Lisa pushed back her chair.

"Come on, handsome." She stood, smiling down at him, and held out her hand. "Let's dance."

He thought, looking back at her, smiling back, in the moment before he took her hand and followed her out to the bustle and heat on the dance floor:

_You're the queen of my universe._

_

* * *

  
_

Leaving the table was partly a ruse. When she had him alone in the dancing crowd, Lisa stayed close enough to ask, again: "Where's Eric?"

Rippner adjusted his rhythm to the pulse coming up off the floorboards. "The Dumpster out back. If they empty it within thirty-six hours, the smell shouldn't be that--"

"Jackson--" She smacked his chest. It took him by surprise; he grinned.

"I asked him politely to fuck off out of here."

She was letting the beat move her, and she looked beautiful doing it. She was wearing a skirt in pale olive green, in a fabric that seemed to flow like water with the motion of her hips. "Cross your heart?"

"I swear: he and his tiny pecker are safely on their way home."

A smile that awakened her dimples. "You know why I'm asking, don't you--?"

Jeff and Cynthia danced past, not quite coordinated but looking very happy. "Tell me," Rippner said.

He saw devilment in her bright eyes. "Because if he's dead," she said, "I'm the one who has to cover his shifts."

Rippner smirked. He reached out, caught her hands, drew her closer, maybe, than this type of dancing required, and let the music pulse through Lisa's body to his and back again.

* * *

Twenty-three hours later, he was back in Chicago.

* * *

Rippner wasn't a systems expert. Not yet. More an apprentice. That made him muscle-on-call, but he didn't mind. In fact, given the fact that the northern cold now seemed that much more insidious for his having been warm, both in the Miami sunshine and in Lisa's bed, he found it deeply, bitterly satisfying.

On his first night back in Chicago, Paul Miller pegged him as backup for a raid on a hacker's den. Just south of midtown. A building recently renovated from a tenement, gutted and transformed to spare elegance on the inside, its coarse brick exterior acting now as camouflage for the yuppies and techies who inhabited the place. Rippner and Miller stood to the side while George Robinson, one of the company's human tanks, kicked in the door of a corner single-bedroom on the building's eighth floor.

No knock, no shouted announcement. No chance for the bastard inside to zero out his files or stuff drives in the microwave.

The hacker was black-haired and pale. He burst up out of a wheeled office chair in a U-cornering of PCs, monitors, and drives and turned on them. Like a trapdoor spider exploding out of its burrow. The green and red of surge-protector lights, power backup. A tangle of cables, standing and toppled Red Bull cans, coffee mugs.

As he didn't reach immediately for a weapon, Paul let him get a look at the three of them. The kid was twenty, maybe twenty-one. Caucasian. Some kind of tattoo starting near his right carotid, running down below the collar of his charcoal sweatshirt. Miller and Rippner and Robinson weren't displaying badges. The kid scowled.

"What are you-- the fucking FBI?"

"Not quite," said Miller.

Rippner stepped forward. He was a big kid, hacker-boy was, and he didn't fit the stereotype, meaning he looked like he was really in shape. He nearly laughed when he realized what Rippner, maybe six inches shorter, maybe sixty pounds lighter, was there for. He reached for a steel bar leaning against the wall.

"You don't want to do that," Rippner said.

"Fuck you."

Rippner smiled. He was going to enjoy this.

* * *

Miller, his hands gloved in latex, a grounding strap clipped to his shirtsleeve, was sitting on the floor amid the U of tables and drives, a softsided packet of Torx screwdrivers open beside him. Rippner watched him crack open housings, scan for booby-traps; he watched Miller wince with cautious effort as he uncoupled data cables. One of the company's ongoing monitoring measures: in case any of the feds or local cops were selling drives on the black market, Miller was replacing the hacker's hard drives with drives full of spurious, traceable data.

Miller tapped the silver case of a freshly freed drive. "Maybe I'll let you analyze this one, Jack my lad." Sniffed it with a grin. "You can practically _smell_ the porn on it. Take your mind off of Malibu Barbie. _Miami_ Barbie: sorry, my mistake."

Rippner flinched inwardly. Robinson, keeping quiet watch at the door, said: "As long as he saves the twinks for you, right, Pauly?"

"Oh, so _cruel_."

* * *

They left the body where it was, lying to the side of the horseshoe of computers. A tidy slit at the apex of the neck tattoo. Blood on the brown carpet beneath the black-haired head, congealing.

* * *

"Sorry about that 'Barbie' comment," Miller said. "That was out of line."

In the ash-dirty cold of a very early February morning, Jackson Rippner looked out across the rooftop of the company's Chicago office at the gray-and-black skyline. Miller had come out for a smoke following their night's work, and Rippner had joined him. He didn't smoke, but he didn't mind people who did. He'd stabbed a man to death three hours earlier; to criticize Miller for lighting a cigarette would seem hypocritical.

"That's alright, Paul." Rippner pushed his hands more deeply into his coat pockets. "If I really minded, you wouldn't be here to apologize. You know that."

It was a joke. Mostly.

Miller knew it. "Mm hm." He smiled thinly, exhaled. The wind caught his mouthful of smoke, snapped it away. "You're that most enviable of breeds, Jackson: the non-addicted sociopath."

"He should have set down that bar. I warned him."

"Which I found most interesting."

Rippner glanced at him. "Do you want to say 'stupid,' Paul?"

Miller took a last, pleasurable puff off his cigarette. "Not at all. It was over before it began; even I could see that."

"Then what are you trying to say?"

"That you'd do alright, staying where you are, but you'd do well to make a change. You'll make a fine addition to Systems." He dropped his cigarette, stubbed it out. "Thanks for your help tonight."

"You're welcome."

Miller looked at him critically. "You need a break, don't you?" He reached over, patted Rippner's shoulder. "Goodnight, Jack."

"Goodnight, Paul."

Miller walked off. Rippner lingered in the windy dark. He cast a glance at his mental calendar: eighteen days until London. And Lisa in London. He could admit it to himself: he missed her already. He would miss her more when he got back to his apartment, alone, in the last dead hours before dawn. The Illinois cold was already sunk deep in his bones.

* * *

Ken Warwick didn't possess ego enough to think that this was his lucky day. But he admitted a thrill when he looked up and saw her, following that soft "Excuse me." Copper-red hair falling just past her shoulders, grass-green eyes (and not contacts, either, by the look of them), a dimpled, shy smile that showed good teeth, a spendy dark suitdress that complemented an even-better body.

Still he possessed ego enough not to question a pleasant coincidence, or to wonder why, in this sea of cubicles at London Transport, a girl this beautiful had chosen to approach his. Ken sat taller, to hide the sag at his thirty-seven-year-old office-lifer's waistline, and smiled up at her. "What can I do for you, miss?"

"I'm Amy Kendrick. Thomson Antiquities Limited. I hope you can help me, Mr.--" -- and here she leaned out, fetchingly, for another look at the name plate on his cube's outer wall-- "-- Warwick."

She spoke his name carefully, correctly. _War-rick_. Almost a purr to the _ars_. She offered him her hand. Ken took it.

"I need to rent some space," she said. "Underground."

* * *

He suggested that they talk in the canteen. At a table by a fourth-floor window overlooking London's Broadway, with grayish daylight reflecting off the surface of his coffee and her tea with milk, she told him she felt a little lost.

"I think it's a test for the new girl," she said. She took a cautious sip of tea, then glanced shyly out and down at the black of the cabs, the red of the buses.

"What do you need the space for?" Ken asked, feeling curious and gallant in equal measure. He'd noted her accent: not British, not American, exactly. Canadian, she'd told him, en route to the canteen and its many windows admitting wan floods of February light. "I'm from Toronto," she said, with a smile, sweet and charmingly crooked, and that put him at ease. He considered Canadians more trustworthy than their neighbors to the south.

"The storage of antiques and _objets d'art _pending auction. We really only need the space for about three weeks."

She looked at him beseechingly with those grass-green eyes, and over a cup of coffee, Ken Warwick went from the company line-- "London Transport does not, at this time, condone the further conversion of disused deep-level shelters to commercial storage"-- to a conciliatory "Possibly we could make an exception," to a short list of potential sites.

The idea of the shelters themselves seemed to fascinate her. Dozens of meters underground. Steady temperature, steady humidity. The ability to withstand a nuclear blast--

"Nothing more powerful than a V-2, actually, I'm afraid," Ken said, apologetically. To her pleasantly blank, questioning look, he added: "The old Blitz shelters aren't warranted against atomic apocalypse. Is that a deal-breaker?"

She laughed. "Of course not."

* * *

When Kendrick entered the suite at the Mandarin Oriental, Roland Mason was looking out at the trees and velvety grass in Hyde Park. "It's so green here," he said. He turned from the window. He was a very tall man, very lean. Black hair parted to the side. Strong features. A hawkish nose, mouth a little too wide, shock-blue eyes. He moved toward her like a panther in a beautifully tailored suit.

"What did you get?" he asked.

Kendrick placed her briefcase on the largest of the sitting room's tables, home also to three open laptops and assorted papers, opened it, and handed him, in passing, a black plastic folder.

"See for yourself." She started unbuttoning the jacket of her suitdress. "I think Chancery Lane is our best bet. Most suitably located."

"If we don't mind getting cozy with the phone exchange." Mason scanned the pages of the prospectus. "How about St. Paul's?"

"Construction of the shelter there stopped in 1941." Kendrick pulled off the jacket as she walked to one of the suite's bedrooms. "They were afraid of rattling the cathedral. It's not finished, Roland," she added, with a bit more emphasis, from beyond the threshold of the bedroom door.

"But _how_ not-finished is it?"

Kendrick had herself in an old gray sweatshirt when she re-entered the sitting room. She finished zipping and buttoning a worn pair of cargo-pocket khakis as she asked: "Do you really need to know?"

"I thought playing Mata Hari would make a nice change for you."

"I'm the damn grease-monkey, Roland." She watched him go to the bar and uncap a bottle of Glenlivet. "Rose is our specialist when it comes to subtle human interaction; you know that."

"Very tactfully put." With a toothy smile, Mason poured, then turned and offered her a tumbler of whiskey over ice. "Are you seeing Mr. Warwick tonight?"

"It looks that way, _mein Kommandant_." Kendrick took the glass.

"Good girl." Mason focused again on the list of shelters. "Now all we have to do is wait for Miss Wheeler to reel in the others."

Kendrick winced around a sweet-burn sip of whiskey. "What about Carter?"

"John Carter will not be a problem. We'll have what we want. The Greeks will _think_ they have what they want." Mason looked her way. His smile became relaxed, predatory. "As for Carter and his people... let's just say, Amy, that the manager has been managed."

*****


	2. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Brace for incoming plot. And a change in P.O.V.: I'm messing around a bit with this one. We heard from Jackson; now it's Lisa's turn. Enjoy. And--oh, yeah-- Reisert and Rippner aren't mine. The rest of 'em, though: dibs. Thanks for reading.

* * *

It was her book. Rippner was reading it. A trade paperback of short stories by Katherine Anne Porter. Lisa Reisert paused the movie she had been watching on the entertainment console built into the seatback in front of her and took off the headphones that had come, compliments of Brandywine Air, wrapped in crinkly cellophane. They were three and a half hours into an eight-hour flight from Chicago-O'Hare to London-Heathrow, seated behind the right-side wing of a Boeing 777. He had the aisle seat; Lisa had moved to the window, giving them both a bit more room, when the window seat had gone unclaimed. It was just past dinner (a decent chicken teriyaki with vegetables and rice for both of them, water, ginger ale); now, at two forty-five a.m. Central Standard Time, the inhabitants of the Boeing were settling down to read or watch movies or doze. In the aisles around Rippner's and Lisa's, hands reached up: tiny angled lamps winked on, winked off. They were beyond the rush period for romantic Valentine's Day getaways to London; the spring tourist season had yet to begin in earnest. As a result, the plane was about two-thirds full. An ash-blond woman in her mid-twenties, wearing gray sweatpants and a pink sweat-hoody, had commandeered the empty three-seat row at the center of the plane, across from Rippner. She'd put on a sleep mask and stretched out across all three seats with a travel pillow tucked beneath her right ear. Lisa didn't envy her either the space she'd claimed or the woman's ostensible ability to relax so thoroughly in a metal pressurized tube rocketing along at five hundred miles an hour eight miles over the Atlantic. If anything, she was glad, keeping the slim metal arch of the earphones from tangling in her hair as she took them off, that nothing in her own life or career compelled her to become so resigned to life as a traveler. She might nap on a plane, but she'd never think of a row of seats as her personal bedspace.

She set her headphones on the empty seat between her and Rippner, leaned close enough to make herself quietly heard over the sound of the engines, and nodded toward the blue-covered paperback open in his hands. "My grandmother cooked for her," she said.

Rippner's eyebrows lowered in friendly perplexity. "Henrietta?"

"Mm hm. In Texas. Miss Porter said she was the toughest broad she'd ever met."

He smiled, that boyish, dimpled smile that showed his even top row of teeth. The smile he'd first used to win her over, some two years back, before they'd briefly made each other's lives hell on and around Flight 1019. Now she knew his expression was sincere.

"Must be genetic," he said.

Lisa smiled back, kissed his cheek. Even above the controlled rumbling of the engines, she thought she felt him tremble slightly. The intimacy between them was easy, but still so novel. "Grandma told me, 'It goes with the name, Lisa Henrietta.' She said that Miss Porter told her she based a character on her, but she wouldn't say which one."

He turned in his hands the paperback's worn bulk. "And you've been trying to figure it out ever since."

"It's a family mystery."

He went back to his reading; she kept the sound from the entertainment console low enough to hear his seatbelt unbuckle fifteen minutes later. She didn't look as he got up, but once he entered the aisle, she took off her headphones again and watched where he went. Forward, toward the restrooms. She paused the movie, bent to take her bag from beneath the seat in front of hers, and edged out of the row. She could use a stretch, too. Her leg muscles were comfortably numb.

With the carpet of the aisle rumbling against the soles of her sneakers, she headed casually for the restrooms.

*****

The locking clasp slid from red to green. VACANT. The door opened. Rippner's shock-blue eyes went wide when he saw her. Lisa pushed into him, crowding him back into the restroom. She reached back to re-lock the door.

With one hand, she gripped his throat, pushing up firmly under his jaw to keep him off-balance. "Don't fight me," she murmured. He didn't speak, didn't protest. He watched her, alert. She could feel his pulse against the ball of her thumb.

Only the sound of their breathing, oddly clear above the thrum of the engines. She studied him. A long, indulgent look at his unorthodox-angel's face, his wonderfully full lips, his unearthly eyes. The surprise, the anticipation, in his expression. A bumping friction between their bodies in that tiny space.

She moved her hand to his jaw, turned his face slightly away, pressed her lips to the pulse point she'd felt with her thumb. Nibbled his skin while she released him, then set her hands to wandering his back and torso. He tipped his face, angled his mouth toward hers in a silent query; she kissed him, opening her mouth into his, while she slipped her hands under his sweatshirt, then slid fingertips beneath the loose, soft waistband of his jeans, his boxers. Rippner did as he'd been told. He was a good hostage. He didn't fight her, even as her hands wandered down to fondle his buttocks, then reached to the front, to unbutton and unzip his jeans. He kept his eyes on her. They were luminous when she reached into her bag and held up a foil-wrapped square.

A condom.

*****

She didn't expect it to work for her as well as it was apt to work for him. Female and male anatomies were simply different that way. She would have settled for the thrill of surprising him, of doing something wicked thirty-five thousand feet above the ocean. But his being her hostage did nothing to detract from his skill as a lover. Rippner listened to her when she murmured, her lips brushing his ear--

"Right there, right there, right there--"

-- and maybe ten minutes later, twelve, eighteen at the outside (honestly, who was watching the clock, save anyone who might have been hoping to use this lav?), she was as much as melting into him, they were melting into each other, and-- good hostage that he was-- Rippner was holding her while she regained her composure. Not that he, gasping, was in any shape to do anything other than be held by her in turn. Little likelihood of a takeover attempt on his part. He seemed absolutely disinclined to make a break for it. They were, collectively, a rustling, panting, rubber-kneed mess. The skin of his abdomen and groin felt deliciously warm against hers; the air behind was cool on her thighs and backside, where his hands weren't touching her, supporting her. She disengaged from him slowly. He watched her, not moving, as she dressed. His blue-eyed stare was the purest x-ray vision: she felt more naked with his eyes on her then, pulling her panties and sweats and shirt back in place with trembling hands, than she had all the while they were bumping and grinding. Possibly insolent on his part, given their respective roles-- he the victim, she in charge-- but she liked the feeling very much.

She laid her hand against the flush on his cheek-- God, those wonderful, delicate, sharp bones-- and kissed him. A wicked, breathless bit of smile.

"Thanks for the quickie," she said.

His lips pulled back in a smirk. She smirked back, threw the door lock to green-- and left him to deal with the condom.

*****

"The most amazing thing happened to me in the restroom."

As Rippner re-took his seat, Lisa closed the paperback of Porter short stories. She had been reading from "Pale Horse, Pale Rider." She looked at him innocently. "What?"

"This beautiful brunette just pushed her way in and had her way with me."

He was being a bit ginger about rebuckling his seatbelt. Lisa smiled to herself. "Maybe you should let the flight crew know."

"I prefer to keep her to myself, thanks."

He looked at her. Lisa offered him the book, and he shook his head. "I'm feeling a little sleepy."

"Me, too," she replied.

Rippner smiled and reached up and switched off their reading lamps.

*****

At eleven-forty local time, Lisa stood at a customs counter in London Heathrow and answered questions from a friendly fifty-ish man in a blue button-down uniform shirt and tie. His square face was jocular, but his eyes were very, very keen. Length of stay? Eight days. Business or pleasure? Pleasure. She felt herself blush when she said it. He directed his discreet smile at her customs card. Address at which she'd be staying? London. One Aldwych. A beautiful place, he said. Welcome to Great Britain, Miss Reisert.

*****

She imagined airports were airports the world over, but Heathrow was less daunting than she'd been led to expect. Larger but airier, less of a warren, than O'Hare. Rippner had hired a car to take them to the Aldwych. They each had a Travelcard, but he thought it best that they get to the hotel and get settled as efficiently and comfortably as possible. He knew her preference for economical travel, but navigating the Tube, especially the escalators, he said, was definitely not fun with a weight of luggage. They'd have plenty of chances to see the Underground later.

*****

It was clear but cool as they exited Terminal One. She'd packed and dressed for the weather-- a selection of sweaters, jeans, leggings, a dress coat, a tweedy-leathery jacket, gloves, cap and scarf as needed-- but she suspected the air felt brisker to her Florida skin than it felt to Rippner. In fact, he seemed to brighten, stepping out of the car at the Aldwych. She understood: she'd felt one good, hard blast of Chicago winter roughly five weeks back, when she'd hauled him home from his near-poisoning at the hands of Matthew Leon, and that had been enough. He lived with cold some five months out of the year. The air here smelled clean, too-- no hint of Chicago industry, oddly little of the big-animal odor she associated with large North American cities like New York.

The Aldwych was its own block, a standalone, slender sweep of building pointing toward the Strand like the prow of a Thirties luxury liner. Lisa thanked the doorman; Rippner followed her; a second man followed him with their luggage.

She wanted to see the place as a professional hotelier. She found herself smiling in stunned delight. The lobby was pillared, spacious, high-ceilinged, the white of the walls and the antique arch of the dark window casings a gracious contrast to the gold-and-teak of the Lux. She felt as though she were stepping back in time, or entering a temple; for the first time since she and Rippner had boarded the plane last night, she felt as though she were truly outside the States, and somewhere far, far older. In the tasteful pale light, the present seemed to balance perfectly with times past.

She caught Rippner watching her, his elbow resting casually on the mirror-polish of the reception desk. He had keycards in his hand. He and the receptionist, a coolly precise dark-haired young man, were looking at her with nearly matched looks of polite expectation.

"Do you approve, Miss Reisert?" Rippner asked.

"It'll do," she said. When the receptionist did his best not to look crushed-- Lisa saw in him, suddenly, Cynthia: he was the new boy, she realized, probably just out of training-- she added: "It's lovely. Really. Absolutely lovely."

"Thank you, Miss Reisert." The receptionist's relieved smile revealed itself in his hazel eyes. _Peter_, read the brass-colored name tag on his black lapel. "Enjoy your stay."

*****

They had a corner suite on the fourth floor. The shape of the sitting room followed the curve of the building. Pale cream walls, deep blue carpeting. A sofa in mauve, glass-topped tables, fresh orchids in tall crystal vases. All spotlessly clean. While Rippner tipped the bellhop, Lisa wandered to one of the room's two windows and looked out at the buildings arching gracefully away along Aldwych.

When they were alone, Rippner asked: "Will it do?"

She was, frankly, a little stunned. She wandered into the bedroom, checked the bathroom, the free-mounted round basin, the selection of soaps and shampoos and lotions from an organics company out of New Zealand; she cast a professional glance toward the gleaming shower drain and the baseboards. Rippner watched her. When she re-entered the bedroom and ran her fingers down the edge of the bed's black headboard, he asked:

"Sweeping for bugs, Lise?"

"They're everywhere these days," she heard herself say, a little absently. "Bedbugs. You can't be too careful."

He chuckled, opening his suitcase.

The white down coverlet on the bed looked like a cloud. Rippner left his unpacking and tackled her playfully onto it. Lisa laughed, surprised. He relaxed his weight onto her, and she wrapped him in her arms.

He nuzzled her; he kissed her throat. He eased her thighs gently apart and pressed himself against her. Casually possessive but not insistent. It could go several ways. She might doze off like this, contentedly; she might ease out from under him and finish her unpacking; she might let him strip her naked and submit her to variations on the theme she'd started in the lav on the plane.

Rippner smoothed her hair away from her forehead, caressed her cheek. "Are you tired?"

"No. I slept well on the flight, actually."

In the slight upturn at the corners of his mouth, she saw him thinking it: _A really good orgasm will do that for you._ "How about some exercise, then?" he asked. "Have a look at the town?"

*****

Back at street level, on foot, with traffic coming at them from the wrong side, she had a moment of mild panic. London near Covent Garden was not a tall city, but it certainly seemed a jumbled one, and she had a sense, waiting in a knot of pedestrians beside Rippner for a walk signal at the corner of Aldwych and the Strand, that they were about to step into a maze.

He caught her reaching for her A-Z. "Pages sixty-seven to sixty-eight," he said, his eyes twinkling.

Lisa closed the atlas and her bag. "Smart alec."

*****

He didn't tell her where they were headed, as they walked east along the Strand, then joined Fleet Street, but Lisa guessed. Nevertheless, she felt her breath catch in her throat when she first looked up at the dome of St. Paul's. She saw in her mind a classic wire image, a photo of the cathedral taken during the Blitz, fire and smoke engulfing the buildings all around while the dome, untouched and intact, glowed with the light from the flames.

They came in on a paved path that wound through the churchyard, where an American gray squirrel glared at them and the circling auto traffic from the grass beneath a thick-trunked leafy tree, legs splayed, tail belligerently a-twitch. They joined an intermittent flow of tourists and parishioners up the broad stone steps to the main doors. Rippner caught her looking at him wryly just before they went inside.

"What--?" he asked.

"I'm experiencing a bit of a disconnect here, Jackson," Lisa confessed. "You-- church--"

"As long as no one splashes me with holy water, I should be fine." He grinned. "Come on."

*****

They gazed at the nave and upward into the dome, at the light and space, the paintings depicting the life of Saint Paul. Rippner led the way to a door midway along the cathedral's five-hundred-foot length, to a door at the southeast corner of the dome.

"Care to see London the old-fashioned way, Lise?" he asked.

*****

Before the modern skyscraper, before the Eye started its slow aerial spin on the south bank of the Thames, St. Paul's was the most heavenward view in all of London. Four hundred and nine steps led to the Golden Gallery of the cathedral's cupola, three hundred and fifty feet above the floor of the nave. Rippner and Lisa made the climb casually, and alone. Some two hundred steps up, they made their way along a narrow service passage to the Whispering Gallery, the joists and arched copper of the interior dome visible to their left. The second stage of the climb led them to the air and wind of the Stone Gallery, where they looked down through the balusters at the deep blue width of the Thames, across the silver spine of the Millennium Bridge to the square industrial bulk of the Tate Modern.

Rippner stood beside her, his arm loosely around her waist. "Want to go all the way to the top?" he asked.

"Lead on."

*****

She disliked flying, but, paradoxically, perhaps, she wasn't afraid of heights. So the view down through the tight mesh of the metal stairs spiraling to the Golden Gallery bothered her not at all. She let Rippner lead the way. They stood at the top of St. Paul's Cathedral with nothing over their heads but puffy gray-bellied clouds in a blue pre-spring sky and looked down at London sprawling away beneath them. Rippner stepped close to the railing and turned to Lisa, resting his elbows on the railing cap, the metal there worn to paintless black, as smooth as stone.

"Come here," he said.

Lisa put away her camera and came over.

Rippner straightened away from the railing. "Close your eyes."

"You first," she countered.

He closed his eyes. Lisa, her heart beating a bit more quickly, followed suit. She felt exposed but not fearful. Even as the wind buffeted her hair and jacketed shoulders, the tarmac deck of the gallery was solid beneath her feet. Rippner put his hands on her, on her upper arms. She didn't flinch. He drew her closer and kissed her forehead, her temple. With his eyes still closed, he missed her mouth, kissed her cheeks instead. She found his lips before he found hers. They kissed deeply, there in the clear, cool, windy heights.

Giggling behind them. Lisa opened her eyes. She and Rippner turned to see a group of girls, maybe first-year-college-aged, emerging from the door of the cupola, cameras in hand, their puffy parkas a rainbow of colors in the late-winter sun.

*****

They opted for the whole package at St. Paul's, top to bottom: they saw the place from the tip of the dome all the way down to the crypt. Lisa, armed with a visitor's map, located the tombs of Florence Nightingale and Christopher Wren, through whose fine building she and Rippner were prowling. In the northwest corner of the level, before a deep alcove, stood a brace of scaffolding hung with NO ENTRY signs.

Rippner asked at the gift shop: "What's going on?"

The clerk was female, twentyish, brown-haired, and glass-eyed bored. "Surveyors from London Transport, I think."

Rippner frowned mildly. Lisa saw calculation in the movement of his eyes as he looked across at the alcove. "Extending the line from St. Paul's station?" he said.

"I'm not certain, sir. I'm sorry."

Behind the bars of the scaffolding, four men emerged from the alcove. One was possibly a church official, an older man in a black suit, pepperish gray hair neatly trimmed; the second was paunchy, ginger-haired, and younger, carrying a briefcase and wearing the type of badly fitted blue suit that Lisa associated with flunky government work; the third was a very tall, sleek man in a gray suit as beautifully cut as the second man's was ugly, with black hair and eyes-- Lisa could see, even at this distance-- almost as shockingly blue as Rippner's. The fourth man was striking for another reason entirely.

"He looks like Boris Karloff," Lisa said.

Rippner looked. Man number four was in his late forties, possibly his early fifties, rawboned, nearly the same height as man number three. Unlike the others, he was wearing work clothes, dark blue trousers, an oilskin jacket over a heavy gray sweater, and those clothes appeared to be dirty with dust and mud. He was carrying a leather tool bag, and he looked, Lisa thought, as he stood apart from the others to take a call on a cell phone, as though burning away his flesh would reveal a gleaming steel skeleton underneath.

Rippner, standing near a spinner of post cards near the shop entrance, was trying not to stare. He was practically glaring at a photo of the cathedral at sunset.

Lisa edged closer. "Do you know him, Jackson?"

"I'm not sure," he said.

*****

They finished their tour of the cathedral. As they were leaving, Lisa saw Boris exiting to their right, tool bag in hand. Which wouldn't have been all that odd, except for his face, only he turned and looked right at them.

A beat. Lisa felt a jolt of adrenaline.

He walked off down the wide stone steps. Rippner touched her arm, and she paused with him to the left of the doors. He was looking after Boris. Letting him get some distance. Right as the man reached the base of the stairs and turned to the right, Rippner moved.

He said, as they reached the sidewalk: "Put on your cap, Lisa. Give me your jacket."

Rippner took off his own jacket as Lisa pulled on her gray knit cap. He handed her his sueded brown leather jacket, and she put it on; he folded her jacket over his arm. Altering their appearance, if ever so slightly. He kept his eyes on Boris as they crossed the churchyard and entered the bustle of pedestrian and auto traffic off Cheapside.

He was heading for the roundel of St. Paul's station. Rippner took out his Travelcard. Lisa took out hers. Rippner let Boris get a lead on them at the stairs, then followed him down. He was slotting a credit card into a wall-mounted fare vendor when they entered the station's low-ceilinged tumult. Rippner passed him and walked toward the turnstiles. Just before Lisa inserted her Travelcard, Rippner caught her hand. "Wait, Lisa."

Boris was going back up the stairs. Rippner followed him. Lisa followed Rippner.

*****

From Newgate, then along Holborn, they kept distance between themselves and Boris. Surrendering to the thrill of the chase was easy. She and Rippner moved well together. Lisa seemed to sense when he wanted to slow, to step into a doorway, to stand as innocently as any couple out to see the sights, looking into a shop window, pausing to peruse a bill of fare. Just past Chancery Lane station, Boris stepped into a Boots. They followed him in. Rippner guided Lisa back to housewares while Boris bought a bottle of aspirin.

They passed the news agents, navigated the controlled mayhem outside Holborn station. In a sidestreet west of Holborn, a sign reading BLOOMSBURY COURT high on the wall of the building just off the turning, Boris entered a bookstore.

At the gray wall just short of the store's street window, Rippner hesitated. Lisa had had just a glimpse before they stopped: an old shop, no Borders gloss, covers in red and brown and green, hardback but not, seemingly, anything of value enough to warrant protection from direct sunlight.

"I won't tell you to wait out here," Rippner said. He looked at her frankly, then opened the door of the shop. Lisa followed him in.

A chime sounded as they cleared the door. A pair of sensors at ankle level, no old-fashioned tinkling of bells overhead. No one was at the corner counter to their left. The cash register on it was modern, a flat black box and keyboard beneath a black-backed flatscreen monitor. Eight narrow aisles of shelves stood before them, reaching back into the store. They were tall, ten feet or better, and neatly packed with books. No cramming, no mismatched, tipping stacks. Balancing this against the lower quality of the stock sacrificed to the sun's fading rays in the display window, Lisa thought whoever owned the place knew the value of his or her inventory.

Boris was not immediately in view. Rippner moved from aisle to aisle, looking toward the back of the store. There was a stockroom door in the back, visible from the aisle farthest to the right. It was open. The space beyond was very dark. Rippner touched Lisa's arm, and now he said to her, without saying anything at all: _Stay here._

She nodded, not liking it, and watched him walk off cautiously down the aisle. She tensed as he disappeared into the darkness beyond the doorframe.

She was there, hovering at the head of the far aisle, when the shop's doorchime sounded. She started, turned. A young man in a black pea coat was entering, a carrier of four white Starbucks coffee cups in hand. He looked at her, surprise in his dark eyes. He had straight thick brown hair in need of a cut, and a crooked, toothy smile that quickly replaced that initial look of surprise, and he asked in an American accent as he unwound a black-and-white-checked scarf from his neck:

"Can I help you?"

Lisa stepped away from the far aisle, quickly scanned books in the row one over. "Yes--"

-- She was looking at the mystery section. The _ay_s, the _bee_s. Agatha Christie--

"I can't seem to find Leslie Charteris," she said.

He came closer. Lisa tried not to look nervous. "Romance?" he asked.

"Mystery, actually. He created a character called The Saint."

The young man looked blank. "Well, let's see--"

Lisa let him scan the shelves to her right and left-- she was standing with her back directly in front of a dozen Charteris titles, in hardcover and paperback-- while she listened toward the storeroom for crashes, gunshots, sounds of a struggle.

"Ah. There. There you go." The young man pointed, smiled his lopsided smile. Lisa, feigning surprise, turned toward the line of Saint books level with her lungs.

Sounds from the storeroom. Lisa started; the young man, looking toward the back of the store as she did, didn't notice.

"Amy--?" he called.

No reply. But a moment later, Rippner came walking toward them up the narrow aisle, ahead of a red-haired woman with grass-green eyes. She wore a sweatshirt and jeans that were dustier than work in a bookstore might warrant, and on her face was a look of perfectly stilled fury. She focused the look and her green eyes on the young man while Lisa said to Rippner: "I told you, sweetie: all the Charteris they had would be on the shelves."

"Guess you were right, angel."

He was doing a very good job of not looking perplexed. He slipped an arm around Lisa's waist, kissed her on the lips, and made a show of scanning the spines of the books she'd found.

"Were you looking for a particular title?" the young man asked. The green-eyed woman gave him a look of undistilled death.

"_The Saint and the Vanishing Mendicant,_" Rippner replied. He looked amiably at the young man. "Ever hear of it?"

*****

Two minutes later, they were walking back the way they'd come, along Holborn. Rippner was looking pensively at the sidewalk.

"That was a fake title, wasn't it?" Lisa said.

"Mm hm."

"What happened to Boris Karloff?"

"Poof--!" Rippner spread his strong, square hands to the cool air. "No sign of him."

"A lot of these old buildings are connected, aren't they?"

"Yeah. He might have had work done," Rippner continued, half to himself, muttering. "I should know something about-- Bloomsbury Court, Lisa," he said, more clearly. "Ring any bells?"

"No."

Again, as before, when he'd stood outside the shop: hesitation. She could practically hear the intrigue, his job, calling him. Then his face softened. "We're on vacation, right?"

"That's the rumor," Lisa replied.

He turned to the left, suddenly, into an alley Lisa might not even have noticed in passing. Just as she was about to tell him enough was enough, she'd had her share of skulduggery for the day, he stopped in front of a glass door. An awninged bank of windows to the left. Above the awning, in red neon, were the words _Bar Polska_.

Rippner held the door for her. "How about a snack?"

*****

They sat at a round modern table away from the windows, a plate of hot pierogies and tiny clear glasses of rose-infused vodka between them. Lisa watched Rippner scoop sour cream onto the blade of a butter knife.

"The man we followed. Who do you think he is, Jackson?"

"I'm not sure--"

"Who do you think he _was_?"

Rippner sipped his vodka. "Bill Morgan. Engineer. Specialized in digging. Tunnel work. Transport of London might be considering modifications to St. Paul station; if he's gone legit, he might be helping them make sure they don't damage the foundation of the cathedral."

"If he's gone legit."

Rippner's lids were low over his clear eyes; his eyebrows twitched in thought. He looked down at the plate between them and said: "I never even asked if you like pierogies."

He was being evasive, but she smiled at the honest apology in his tone. "They're very good. And the vodka is excellent."

Rippner finished his glass of vodka and bisected another pierogi with his fork. His smile didn't quite reach his eyes.

_We're on vacation, right?_

*****

She kept the thought as she dressed for dinner. She sent Rippner on ahead, not wanting to delay or to be late for their reservation (they were on for eight o' clock) as much as she found herself wanting to indulge: they were traveling together; their toothbrushes and antiperspirant were sharing space by the bathroom sink; but tonight she wanted to make an entrance. Rippner seemed willing to play along. He watched her for a moment from the doorway of the bedroom, lean and handsome and relaxed, his hands in the trouser pockets of an impeccable black suit, and then left her to fuss with her hair while he went for a drink in the lobby bar.

*****

She wondered, when she walked into Indigo, if she had done the right thing. She had her hair up; she was wearing a simple black sleeveless dress. And when Rippner looked across the room at her, her heart went still. No pounding, no pain, no catching of breath. A moment of perfect suspension.

He smiled, then, and it was his boyish, open smile, much again the smile of the Tex-Mex in Dallas. And nothing like that smile at all. He wasn't looking at her now; his lightning-blue eyes were looking directly _into_ her.

The head waiter broke their line of vision. Lisa, nearly relieved, met Rippner midway, at a modern rectangular table against the softly lit wall, near one of the arched windows, away from the view of the lobby bar. He passed behind her to draw her chair back from the table, and she could feel his eyes on her skin.

"Never more beautiful," he said quietly.

*****

He had the duck; she had the salmon. The food was excellent. So was the wine. Rippner raised to her his glass of crisp Chardonnay.

"Thank you for the bagels, Lisa."

She touched her glass to his. "You're welcome."

"We're even now."

"I should hope so."

The food was delicious, the setting lovely. She thought, as she looked at him, _I could be anywhere as long as I could look into your eyes._

She set down her glass, looked back to her plate. She picked up her fork and finished her salmon, the last of the spinach and pistachio risotto.

Rippner re-focused on his own food. He asked, perhaps too casually-- in any event, he seemed to be asking the rest of his duck, not her: "Is something wrong?"

"I think I'm a little tired." It was at least half true. She'd had little sleep; in the space of a day, she'd crossed an ocean and several time zones. She smiled for him, apologetically. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright. We'll make an early night of it." Rippner smiled back at her. "Save the wild nightclubbing for the rest of the week."

She laughed softly. "Right."

*****

Over coffee and a dish of warm rice pudding (his) and a bowl of cocoanut ice cream (hers), from which they each stole, one from the other, shamelessly, they discussed their plans for the rest of the week, or at least for tomorrow, which seemed to be shaping up as a day of museums. Seeing the Tate Modern from the top of St. Paul's seemed to have been the trigger. Neither of them mentioned the bookstore or Boris-- _Bill Morgan,_ Lisa reminded herself. And neither of them said what they felt when their eyes met.

*****

"It was Rippner," Bill Morgan said to Roland Mason.

Muttered Amy Kendrick, slouched in a stuffed chair in Mason's sitting room at the Mandarin Oriental: "And you led him right to the bookstore."

Morgan gave her a dead-eyed glare. "He didn't recognize me."

"Why the hell did he follow you, then?"

"The real question," Mason said, interrupting, "is 'What is he doing here?'" He looked toward the room's bar, where a slender dark-haired man in a two-piece charcoal suit and a brunette in a sleek sapphire-blue dress appeared to be holding their own private cocktail party. "What can you tell us, Mr. Grant?"

Robert Grant deftly plucked an olive from his cocktail glass. He popped it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed, casually. He kept his eyes, a shade of brown just short of black, on his companion at the bar as he answered: "I have no idea. But I'm meeting with Carter tomorrow afternoon; I'll feel around."

Mason joined them. "You have some history with Rippner, don't you, Rosemary?"

Rosemary Wheeler smiled, flicked him with devilish blue eyes. "Not as much as I'd prefer."

"What about the girl?" This came from Kendrick's and Morgan's third party at the bookstore, the young man badly in need of a haircut. Seth Patterson was seated now at the room's largest table, the dwelling place of laptops and papers, and when the others in the room turned their attention to him, he shrank down slightly behind his wall of screens.

"The girl you made an ass of yourself with?" Kendrick asked.

"I thought she'd be suspicious if she was in the store and no one-- She looked like she needed help--"

"She already _was_ suspicious, you idiot. That's why she and Rippner were _in_ the store in the first place."

"Amy," Mason said. He waited until he was certain she would remain quiet before he continued. "Bob, get on that, too. Find out who she is."

Grant plucked himself another olive. "Will do."

"She might be his replacement," Morgan said.

"If, by 'replacement,' you mean 'friends with benefits and a side order of syrup.'" Kendrick gave him a look that said that, between him and Patterson, she considered herself to be well and truly surrounded by idiots. "You don't know a thing about body language, do you? I'd put more money on him being here with her on their honeymoon."

Morgan's right hand closed in a fist. He took a deep breath, released it slowly, restraightened his fingers as he did. "I still don't know why we need Bloomsbury _and_ St. Paul's."

He looked again at Patterson.

"One more time," said Seth. He looked back at the older man evenly now; his voice was more confident. "Bloomsbury-- British Museum-- is not far enough underground. To guard against the deactivation pulse that Professor Becker will transmit when-- or if-- he realizes his nanites are missing, we need at least the depth of one of the deep shelters. And British Museum is still a visible station: we need privacy to test both compounds, the 'nites and the Play Doh, and one of those compounds-- the Play Doh-- is extremely volatile. We set any of that off near Holborn, and someone is apt to notice. I don't think London Transport has an especially tolerant policy toward people lighting off fireworks in the Tube. Do you?"

Morgan moved toward him, his face still but deadly. Mason stepped between them.

"Stick to your tunnels, Bill," he said. "Rippner or no, we're still in good shape." Some of the anger eased from Morgan's shoulders; Mason glanced back toward Grant. "And, Bob, get us that intel on Rippner and the girl."

"My pleasure," Robert Grant said. "Here's to tomorrow." He winked at Rosemary Wheeler and drank the rest of his cocktail.


	3. Chapter 2

**A/N:** In case anyone cares, I've been doing a bit of soundtracking with this one. Maybe I ought to post stuff like this over in my profile, but the tune I had absolutely stuck like a tick in my brain for Jackson and Lisa at the top of St. Paul's was and is "The End of the World," by former Catherine Wheel frontman Rob Dickinson. That is all. Oh: and brace for incoming plot. As always, thanks for reading.

*****

Rippner woke. He was on his back, as was typical; he wasn't hung over; he was, under the cloud-white comforter, very cozy. And Lisa Reisert was curled on her side, asleep, next to him. For a man who'd had his share, fair or un-, of post-surgical, post-beating, post-knockout, and post-drugged awakenings, it wasn't a half-bad way to regain consciousness. Before he looked at the alarm clock, he guessed the time from the light filtering past the drapes; he came within eight minutes: 7:37. He reached to switch off the unringing alarm, then lay and had a long, indulgent look at the woman sleeping next to him.

He didn't regret having stalked her as part of his work; he simply wished, now, that all his watching of her could be this innocent. Lisa had her share of the sheets and comforter pulled nearly to her ear; the index finger of her left hand was resting lightly along her chin, as if she were deep in thought. Rippner let himself go still, lay listening to her breathe. Their relationship was still new enough for him to find wonder in the fact that she could sleep so soundly next to him.

His mouth was dry. He eased reluctantly away from Lisa and got up. He had on a pair of silk boxers; the air of the room was cool, but not uncomfortably so, on his back and chest. The suite had a full bar and a well-stocked refrigerator. He got himself a tall bottle of spring water and stood for a moment looking out the window, at the bleary, intermittent flow of Saturday-morning traffic, at the pale yellow sunlight trying to penetrate the blue shadows sunk down deep between the buildings.

He went back to the bedroom. Lisa was shifting, still buried under the covers, her eyes still closed.

"Good morning," Rippner said.

"Morning. Mmm--"

She opened her eyes, looked at him, indulged in a languid stretch. Rippner offered her the bottle of water as he came back to the bed.

"Thanks, sweetie." She took the bottle, drank deeply. She sat up as she did, and the comforter fell away from her shoulders and torso. Rippner found himself staring.

"Were you wearing that when we went to bed?" he asked.

"Yes." She smiled up at him, handing back the bottle. "You must have been as tired as I was."

Rippner shook his head, smiling back. "I must have been."

Lisa lay back on her pillow, her eyes not leaving his. "So, what do you think?"

Simple but effective. She wasn't one for heavy come-ons, flashy details. It was a pale dove-gray camisole, that was all. A tracing of lace at the modest scoop neckline. She wanted him to look, so he looked. He might have looked all day.

"I'm accustomed to seeing you in bed in t-shirts four sizes too big."

"Take your time."

Perhaps a closer examination would be helpful. Rippner crept back onto the bed. Onto Lisa. He leaned in with his weight suspended on his straightened arms and kissed her. She kissed him back. She ran her hands along his sides while he eased more of himself onto her, pressed himself more closely against her.

"I like it," he said, finally, very softly.

Her body beneath his was absolutely relaxed, absolutely open. "I can tell," she murmured.

Invitation in her eyes. Wanting. Rippner kissed her jaw, her throat; he nibbled the exposed skin of her shoulders. He worked his way lower, gently cupped her left breast, took the erect nipple carefully, tenderly, between his lips, through the whisper-soft cotton of her camisole. He nuzzled his way to her belly, pushed away the cami's hem, playfully slipped his tongue-tip into her navel.

"Matching underwear," he observed.

Her breathing was deep and even. Her body was rising slightly toward him, in response to his touch. "Mm hm."

She brushed her fingers into Rippner's hair as he drew away the lacy narrow waistband, just an inch or so to start, possibly three centimeters, if they were to acknowledge their host country. Now her breath was becoming a bit rough. His was, too. He was nibbling the soft skin in the exquisite hollow to the left of her right hipbone when a phone rang.

It wasn't the bedside set.

"That's not mine," Lisa said.

Rippner raised his head, listening to the ring tone. "It's Carter."

"He knows we're here?"

Rippner felt every bit as frustrated as she was trying not to sound. "There's nothing he can't find out."

The phone continued to ring. Rippner got up. His phone and Lisa's were sharing charging space on a polished ebony table in the sitting room. He unplugged his, held it to his ear.

"Rippner," he said, flatly.

_Good morning, Jackson. How are you?_

Rippner wandered back to the bedroom. If Carter was in the mood for hushed tones and grim secrets-- not that it seemed he was: his tone was irritatingly chipper-- Rippner was in no mood to play along. Lisa could hear anything he and Carter had to say to one another.

"What do you want, John?"

_There's someone I want you to meet._

"And there's someone I want _you_ to meet. Her name is Raphaela Montez, she works in Human Resources, and she'd be more than happy to tell you that I'm on vacation."

_She'd be more than happy to remind **you** that you still work for me, Jackson._

"I was about to eat breakfast, John."

_You haven't ordered yet._

Rippner scowled toward the curtained windows, suddenly picturing Carter in a room directly across the street, armed with a bugging set and binoculars. "Where are you?"

_Here in London. Claire and I are at the Savoy. Look, Jackson, this is nothing dangerous. Nothing risky. Lisa is free to come along. Four o'clock, Gordon's Wine Bar, off Villiers. Do you know it?_

"Yes, I know it."

_A scientist we're handling. Quite the character. Almost like something out of a Fritz Lang film. Very interesting work, too. He knows your sister--_

"Fine, John, fine: we'll be there."

_Thanks, Jackson. I appreciate this._ A pause that might have been paired with a sly smile. _Enjoy your breakfast. Give Lisa my regards._

"Four o'clock, John. Gordon's."

Rippner hung up, shut off his phone, rehooked it to its charger. He walked back to the bedroom, paused in the doorway to scratch his neck.

"Carter wants us to meet a mad scientist later," he said.

Lisa watched him from the bed. All of him. Silk boxers, even ones in dusky gray, left little to the imagination. Her eyes on him were tenderly frank, frankly possessive. "Right now I'm in the mood for something else."

Rippner crossed the room, smiled for her as he climbed back into bed. "Breakfast?" he asked.

"Something like that."

Lisa drew him close.

*****

As it happened, they had plenty of time for the Tate Modern, where they debated whether a wall crack, running from ceiling to floor in a gallery on the museum's third level, was actually part of a sculpture installation, dared one another to ride the slides (without success, despite Jackson's poignant insistence that Lisa would consider it one of her life's deepest regrets), and still had time to kill at the National Gallery before they were due at Gordon's. All this after a long, leisurely, mutually pleasurable breakfast.

*****

Off the Strand, down narrow, sloped Villiers Street, Lisa followed as Jackson turned left into what appeared to be half an alley, half back garden. Moss flecked a run of worn steps and a cracked sidewalk leading down to a second, short flight of steps descending into a basement entryway. A pair of doors, one screened, the second old and wooden, opened into a cellar, a sudden, cheery storm of voices, and a third, brief run of steps almost comically uneven. John Carter, stationed near a corner buffet with a tall, gaunt man and two women, one solid, of average height, with dark straight hair, the other tall, an athletic low-mileage forty-something with short ash-blonde hair of the sort that seemed perpetually wind-confounded, waved a greeting.

"You made it," he said, smiling. "Good."

At least that's what Lisa thought he said, above the din.

"For God's sake, John," Jackson half-shouted, "the place doesn't exactly scream 'visiting dignitary'--"

"I know, I know--" Carter closed the distance between himself and them. "Jackson, you know my wife, Claire--"

The fair-haired woman smiled. "Hello, Jackson." She leaned close and kissed Jackson on the cheek. Her eyes were deep-sea blue, and they sparkled mischievously.

Lisa saw Jackson's cheekbones color as he returned the kiss. Not as a lover, though-- she sensed no intrigue, no need to be jealous. If anything, his expression was that of a little boy snared by a doting aunt.

Who was then turning her keen eyes Lisa's way. "You must be Lisa Reisert," Claire Carter said. "I'm very happy to meet you, Lisa."

Lisa took the hand Claire offered. Claire's expression was open and sincere, but appraising, too. A mother's expression, Lisa thought. She found herself deeply touched. In Claire's face she could see the concern of a woman who wanted to know that a man she considered a son was keeping company with the right kind of girl.

She had a good, solid handshake, too. Lisa smiled. "My pleasure, Claire."

Carter, making way for a young man and woman seeking access to a warming tray brimming with chunks of beef and vegetables, was continuing with the introductions. He placed a hand on the arm of the tall, gaunt man--

"Professor Becker, this is Jackson Rippner. Jackson, Professor Becker--"

Lisa's turn. Wenzel Becker looked like something out of silent expressionist cinema. Aristocratic features, graying hair swept off a high forehead. Eyes very pale, a color like a winter sky, blue-gray and clear, very sharp and intelligent. A master hypnotist's eyes. But kind as well.

"My pleasure, Miss Reisert." A gentle, purring voice, a trace of a German accent. The last syllable of her name became -_airt_ when he said it. The _r_ very soft. Lisa liked him immediately.

"And his assistant--"

"Kathy Hobart," said the second woman, offering her hand to Jackson. He frowned slightly as he took it-- only enough for Lisa, perhaps, to notice. Lisa knew why a moment later, when she got her own handshake from Becker's assistant: the woman was trembling slightly. Maybe she didn't like strangers. Or close spaces. Or crowds in such spaces.

"It's secure in its way," Carter was half-shouting to Jackson, as he and Claire led the way through the noisy young-business throng cramming the space between the old pocked bar and a pillar packed with fading, water-damaged posters, framed newspaper clippings, an elbow-high ledge on which were lined glasses of wine at various stages of drainage. "Bugging this place would be a nightmare."

"And only Gordon's has the Number Two Oloroso," said Professor Becker. He offered Jackson an apologetic smile. "We're here on my request."

In reply, Lisa gave him the smile that Jackson didn't seem quite able to manage.

*****

A man was seated at one of two empty tables at the rear of the cellar, under a low brickwork arch. He rose as they approached.

"I've earned my pay today, Carter," he said. "Two tables at Gordon's during rush hour. Tell me that's not worth a bonus."

His tone was genial, but Lisa thought his expression, when he saw Jackson, was too carefully neutral.

"Hello, Rippner," he said.

"Grant." Jackson reached for a handshake. The man called Grant gave him one. His eyes strayed to Lisa.

"And--?" he prompted.

"Lisa," said Jackson, "this is Robert Grant. He's a colleague of mine. Grant, this is Lisa Reisert--"

"-- also a colleague?" Grant prompted. He was wearing a brown suit over a frame as compact as Rippner's. He had eyes the color of semi-sweet chocolate and features that were nearly delicate, and he obviously knew how handsome he was.

"A friend." Lisa, as they shook hands, felt a sudden need to clarify: "A close friend."

A flash of amiable disappointment. "Ahh--"

"If you're done flirting, Grant," Carter said, "maybe you and I could fetch some wine. What do you say--?"

"Of course. Pardon me, Miss Reisert--" As Lisa and the others seated themselves, Grant edged out from under the arch. Kathy Hobart kept her eyes on him. Jealously, Lisa thought.

*****

Two wobbly wooden tables braced together with the judicious assistance of knees and feet. Seven people hunched on tippy chairs around said tables. Jackson looked as if he more than half hoped that Carter would forget how low the ceiling was and smack his head on one of the blackened brick arches when he next got up. A casual drink, two decanters of said sweet Oloroso, drawn off a cask behind the bar.

"I yearn for this wine," Becker said. "It tastes like spring."

"Like a meadow." Lisa sipped thoughtfully. The candlelight trapped in her glass glowed red-gold in the wine. "The way-- the way the meadow on Grandma's ranch smelled. Bluebells. Timothy grass and fresh dirt."

"Dirt?" Rippner echoed, drolly, turning the stem of his glass between a thumb and forefinger.

"No: that's exactly it. Musky, but clean and sweet." _Suhveet_, Becker's German accent said. In the light of the jar candle, his eyes were luminous as he looked at Lisa. He raised his glass to her. "To your grandmother's meadow."

Lisa raised her glass in turn. "Thank you, Professor," she said, smiling.

*****

She found herself wondering if Carter hadn't arranged the meeting with Becker as much for her benefit as Jackson's. He was here in London, Carter was, and Robert Grant was here as his right-hand man (his _manager, _Lisa thought), to coordinate a summit between a handful of countries regarding a certain technology Professor Becker had developed.

"We're calling it 'freeze-tech,'" Carter said, reaching for one of the decanters. "Though that's not entirely accurate, as the professor, I hope, will be good enough to explain."

Becker looked back at him slyly. "Am I _allowed_ to explain it to Mr. Rippner and Miss Reisert, Mr. Carter--?"

"Absolutely. They have my complete trust."

"And your beautiful wife--?"

Carter, caught out, laughed. Claire sighed and pushed back from the table. "I guess that's my cue to step outside," she said. Carter pulled her back into her chair. She let him pour more wine for her as the professor, obviously pleased at having a new, interested audience, began to describe his work:

There was a machine, part auto-C.A.D., part sculptor. There was a chemical compound consisting of two parts: a material whose natural state was very cold--

-- "Hence the 'freeze' in 'freeze-tech,'" said Professor Becker, for Carter's benefit.--

-- and a controller, self-replicating, capable of obeying commands from the machine, that actually sculpted the first material into any shape, at any temperature, the user desired.

"My first thought was that the technology might be used as a coolant for nuclear reactors," Becker said. "I also made overtures to the build team at C.E.R.N., but they seem intent on using good, old-fashioned helium to cool their new collider. That's how your name came up, Mr. Rippner; your sister is working for one of the men who turned me down. She seemed interested in my toy; unfortunately, she does not manage their funds."

"Unfortunately, too, the possibility arose that someone might use freeze-tech as part of a weapons system," Carter said. "Professor Becker has yet to fully map the potentialities: were the compounds used, for example, in place of fissionable materials in a warhead, we have no way, as yet, of estimating the damage."

"Miniature ice ages to order?" Claire suggested.

"Or mutually assured glaciation," Jackson countered.

"Hence the summit," Carter said. "To which the professor has kindly and reasonably agreed: we want the technology available to the entire world, not in the hands of a single, highest bidder."

"The controller," Lisa said. "Is it alive?"

Becker, smiling, poured more wine into her glass. "After a fashion, yes. Nanite technology. Creatures that are basically half-organic, half-microchip. Potential applications in medicine as well: surgery, arterial repair, even the treatment of cancer."

"Is the compound dangerous?" This came from Jackson.

"Completely non-toxic. The nanites feed off plastic. A six-inch square of cellophane will support a colony comfortably for a week. The possible uses there are obvious, too."

"Recycling," Claire Carter said.

"What happens if someone touches it?" Jackson asked.

"Ahh-- that." The professor's brows lowered slightly. "We think it would make the brain more receptive to command. To suggestion."

"Potential applications in pharma, anti-psychotics," Carter mused.

"And interrogation," Jackson said quietly.

*****

While Lisa and Rippner learned, over sweet, cask-drawn Oloroso, about Professor Becker's freeze-tech, Roland Mason and Rosemary Wheeler were stealing one of the two vital components of that tech. As Claire Carter finally ordered her husband to open the company's expense account to the hearty delectables of Gordon's buffet, Mason and Wheeler, wearing the faces of Professor Becker and his assistant-- cast in micro-thin latex, very flexible, very convincing-- walked into the labs of Imperial College, London, where Becker's molding compound, the material Seth Patterson called Play Doh, was being stored, placed the Play Doh container in a soft leather satchel, and walked back out. They had passes as convincing as their faces; the university guards saw nothing amiss. Rosemary and Roland entered the restrooms of a nearby pub and emerged as themselves. The faces of Professor Becker and Kathy Hobart swirled away into the bowels of London's sewage system.

*****

Jackson's sour mood when they arrived at Gordon's had been at least partly a product of hunger, Lisa realized; he seemed to cheer up as they ate. Between the seven of them, they plowed through a cheese plate, shared pasties, roast beef, Brussels sprouts, and salad. Add another decanter and a half of Oloroso to the mix, and soon their corner was nearly as boisterous as the rest of the semi-cave that was the oldest wine bar in London. At one point, Lisa dropped her napkin, and she and Becker laughed when they nearly cracked heads as he bent off his spindly chair to pick it up for her. They made their farewells just after six. Wine, it appeared, had made the professor gallant as well as nostalgic; Lisa saw Jackson frown as Becker bowed and kissed her hand.

"Wait--" said Kathy Hobart, pushing her way through the crowd to the side. "I think-- Lisa, yes: I have your bag."

She offered Lisa a multi-pocketed soft leather rucksack that appeared to be the twin of the one Lisa had picked up as they left the tables. The lining of the shoulder strap of the bag Lisa was carrying was tan; the strap of Lisa's bag-- the one that, yes, Kathy was offering her-- had a black lining.

"Sorry; you're right," Lisa said, as she and Kathy exchanged bags. "My mistake."

She and Rippner were the last up the wine bar's narrow, almost comically treacherous stairs. They parted, heading for their respective hotels. Jackson and Lisa strolled back along the Strand. A cool breeze was blowing up off of the Thames; the sun was dropping down toward the high rooftops through a sky of patchy but gathering clouds.

"Well, that was an experience," she said.

"There was something he wanted me to see."

"Carter?"

"Mm hm."

"Why couldn't he tell you what it was when he called?"

"Maybe because someone was listening. Maybe because he's not certain himself. Maybe he wanted a second set of instincts in the room."

"Did they tell you anything?"

"Grant seemed awfully quick to smile. Did you notice?"

"Yes."

"He's impatient about something."

"Miss Hobart was keeping a pretty close eye on him."

Rippner stopped walking. Looked at her in admiration.

"Both of them, then."

"Both of them... what?"

"That will require further thought." He checked his watch. They had theatre tickets for tonight; they'd have time enough to clean up before they left the hotel again. He drew Lisa's arm through his, and they walked on.

"She wasn't the only jealous one at the table," Lisa added.

"I wouldn't be a man if I weren't jealous when it comes to you," Jackson replied.

He was watching her out of the corner of his eye, and again she had the sense that he was looking less at her than into her. Perhaps in an effort to make him feel as exposed as she felt, she said, not ungently:

"They really love you. John and Claire."

Jackson laughed, surprised. "You're delusional. They do not."

"Because you and he are-- I get it mixed up-- is it stone-cold killers with hearts of ice? Or ice-cold killers with hearts of stone?"

"You're--" Jackson paused. He shook his head and grinned, despite himself. "Unbelievable, Lisa."

He walked on. Lisa, following, slipped her arm back through his. The wind from the south was chilly and clean, and the sky above the rooftops was darkening to a dusty lavender. Jackson hugged her arm to his side.

*****

"Do you know where you are?" Roland Mason asked.

Kathy Hobart had entered St. Paul's Cathedral, after hours, through a side door facing the dark trees of the churchyard.

She'd followed Robert Grant down a seemingly endless spiral of meshed metal steps, blackness to the left and right, above and below, the only light coming from his flashlight and hers. A round, ribbed steel vent plunging into the earth. They'd descended through a hatch like a submarine hatch, its thick circular door propped open against the steps, then climbed the rest of their journey down ten rusty rungs of a steel ladder.

Now she stood in a tube like a Tube station would be if the platform were removed. Possibly sixteen feet in diameter, caged bulbs along its length, a hundred feet, roughly: the light wasn't strong enough to render the far end distinct. Crates, scientific equipment, a generator. At a table surrounded by monitors and keyboards sat Seth Patterson.

He was testing the sample she'd brought, the living nanites Becker had been keeping in the safe in his hotel room. He wasn't by nature a suspicious man; he trusted the hotel staff, the laboratory personnel at the Imperial College. No: unlike the molding compound, the Play Doh, Becker had simply wanted, almost paternally, to keep the nanites close.

He'd trusted Kathy Hobart, too. Now, looking at the man for whom she'd stolen his nanites, Professor Becker's assistant shook her head.

"You're standing in a national secret," Mason said.

"During the Second World War," he continued, "the Crown Jewels were removed from the Tower of London and stored in a place-- or places-- unknown to this day, all around the city. This is one of those locations. As Hitler's bombs fell, the church shied away from risking the structural integrity of its precious cathedral for the sake of the cowering unwashed-- hence, it refused to allow London Transport to build a full-size deep shelter parallel to St. Paul's station-- but it opened its turf to the glitter of gold and gems. Church and state united for a common cause."

"For a price, of course," added Rosemary Wheeler, seeming to manifest herself from the shadows behind Mason. "Touching, eh?"

"These aren't the nanites," Seth Patterson said.

Mason stared at Patterson where the younger man sat, perched on a stool, in his tangle of electronics. "They're dead? Becker pulsed them?"

"No." Patterson nodded toward the sample he'd taken from the container Kathy Hobart had brought with her to the shelter. "This is a random oleo-polyresin. Plastic," he clarified, looking at the disbelieving faces around him. "Junk."

"What are you playing at here, Miss Hobart?" Mason asked. She tried not to cringe when he looked at her. "Who else had the combination to Professor Becker's safe?"

"Only I did. I set it for him when we arrived."

"So who has the real nanites?" Wheeler asked. "If they weren't in Becker's safe, and he thought to leave a decoy, that means he was suspicious. Of you, dear," she added, directly to Kathy. "Unfortunately, that means he's apt to suspect you , too, Robert. He likely handed them off-- to whom? Carter? Rippner--?"

Grant smiled drolly. "I can't imagine Jackson inspiring trust at first sight, Rose, can you?" His eyes widened, then, in realization. "Reisert. Lisa Reisert. He had a woman with him," he said, directly to Mason and Wheeler. "She was friendly; Becker took to her; you could tell--" Kathy saw in her mind the meeting at Gordon's as Grant was seeing it--

"When she dropped her napkin," she said. "He put the nanites in her bag."

"You had her bag." Grant said sharply. "You came that close to finding them. What in the world were you--"

"I wanted this." From her own bag, Kathy took Lisa Reisert's passport wallet. She handed it to Mason.

"Why would we want this?" Mason asked.

His tone chilled her. "You might use it to find out who she is-- I thought maybe she and Rippner--" Kathy began.

"No. You're a secretary. You don't think." Mason glanced at the passport, gave the wallet back. "Return it to her before she misses it." He turned his attention to Grant. "Think you can find those nanites for us, Bob?"

"If she has them, they're as good as ours."

"Good man." Mason showed his teeth, smiling. He patted Grant on the shoulder. "Get on it. I'll see Miss Hobart out."

*****

The Jewel Shelter of St. Paul's had two exits: one, as Kathy Hobart had already seen, leading up directly to an alcove off the cathedral's crypts, the other leading, as Mason informed her now, back through a tunnel that reached a disused area in the lower level of St. Paul's station. Said tunnel, having been dug by hand, was only slightly wider than Mason's shoulders. Metallic stalactites spiked the ceiling; the concrete floor was damp and slick. She could hear the late-night trains of the Central Line rumbling far overhead.

Mason led her on a long climb up a ladder whose cold rungs left her fingers covered in rusty dust; at the top, he threw a locking bolt and pushed open a creaking steel door. He looked from side to side, then stepped out. Kathy followed.

They weren't in St. Paul's station. They were in a Tube tunnel.

"Afraid the tunnel actually comes up a few yards short of the station," Mason said, closing the door. "Government funding: you know how it goes." As he spoke, he took a pair of latex gloves from his jacket pocket. Kathy, puzzled, watched him put them on.

"Don't worry, though," he continued. "If you stand here long enough, Miss Hobart, you're sure to catch a train."

Suddenly afraid, Kathy backed away from him. She was careful of the rails-- she didn't know which one was live. She turned in the direction of the station--

Before she could run, she felt something cold splatter on the back of her neck. Shocked, she reached to touch it. Mason held his flashlight on her as she watched the fingers of her right hand turn to ice.

"I found myself wondering," Mason said, "whether, if Professor Becker had seen fit to place dummy material where the nanites were meant to be, he might have dummied out the Play Doh, too."

It was spreading. The ice. Kathy watched in mute shock as her hand froze, then her forearm. The pain struck when the icing reached her right shoulder: a horrible, prickling burning. Her scream choked off as the ice reached her throat, froze her chin and lips. She started to run, blindly, as her eyes crystallized.

She took three steps before she stumbled on a rail tie, and the icicle-bone of her left ankle snapped. She was on her knees, moaning, when Mason came close enough for her freezing ears to hear, for her dying brain still to understand--

"Now I know it works. Too bad we don't have the nanites handy to control it, though, hm?"

In the distance, Kathy could hear-- the sound rattled up through the frozen branches of her nerves-- a train approaching.

"But don't worry," Mason added, before he left her there, kneeling, paralyzed and dying, on the track of the Central Line east of St. Paul's station. "Miss Reisert won't be needing her passport."

*****

That night, as the lights of Piccadilly Circus gleamed in a light drizzle, Rippner and Lisa sat in row five at the Criterion Theatre and watched a four-person adaptation of _The Thirty-Nine Steps._

On impulse, they'd gotten same-day tickets for the show, and Rippner had to admit that the play, slyly faithful to one of Lisa's favorite classic films, was about the cleverest-- and funniest-- thing he'd ever seen. The dapper man playing Hannay was in the clear-- he had only the one part-- but the others, riding herd on all the other parts from the film, every one, were working for a living. Conspirators, traitors, blundering policemen, a stuttering, spittle-mouthed orator, a cranky Scots farmer and his wife, the innkeeper and _his_ wife (who was played by one of the other men in the cast, not by the cast's only female member), and the hapless but eerily robotic Mr. Memory: they were all there. Again, Rippner thought, smiling with open delight as Hannay and a policeman, leaping between wooden crates, managed to convince him that a hair-raising chase along the tops of the speeding cars of the Highland Express was happening right there on stage, as with the great film directors, this was how _management_ happened: you made your mark, your target audience, see _exactly_ what you wanted that mark to see.

That Lisa was enjoying herself certainly didn't hurt. She was sitting forward slightly in her chair, thoroughly caught up, completely focused on the stage. She and plenty of others in the audience were clapping spontaneously and often. Rippner, joining in, thought how much he loved to hear her laugh.

*****

The insanity ended-- the traitors exposed, Hannay cleared of charges of murder-- with a shower of soap bubbles that rained down like fluffy confetti from the ceiling just beyond the proscenium arch. Rippner and Lisa and the rest of the audience in the first six rows, laughing in wonder and shock, were the hardest hit. Not that they were covered, or that the soap seemed like anything that would stain or even linger, but it was a definite surprise and one last, giddy visual joke. Rippner brushed flecks of white foam from his sweater while they waited for the seats around them to empty out. No hurry. The Criterion, enjoying status as a historical property, was small yet palatial. It was a comfortable, well-maintained old theatre, classic in its red velvet and pale rose, the soaring ceiling of its auditorium lending an illusion of space.

"Come on," he said to Lisa, as they walked the upward slope of the aisle leading to the lobby, "let's go bully our way into the Jewel."

The Jewel Bar, discreet and exotic and exclusive, was two streets away, around Piccadilly Circus. Lisa looked at him sidewise. "We can do that?" Her eyes were mischievous, still bright with laughter. "We won't simply hit a wall of bouncers?"

"Trust me," Rippner replied, smiling mysteriously.

They entered the cream-and-onyx of the lobby. The place was emptying out quickly. Lisa drifted to the right, toward a hall overhung with a sign that said _Ladies_.

"Let me comb the bubbles out of my hair first."

"There aren't any--"

"Oh, really--?" She reached over and flicked foam out of his bangs.

Rippner let his smile become a grin. "You look perfect," he persisted.

"Is that a fact?"

"It is."

She paused, looking up at him. She seemed to be feeling the same giddy post-play energy Rippner was feeling. Her dimples were absolutely wicked. "Do you know why you never lie, Jackson?"

"Tell me."

"Because you're so damn _bad_ at it."

*****

The restroom was down not one corridor but two, in, off the lobby, and then back, into one of the halls running parallel to the auditorium. Lisa had the lounge to herself. She touched up her lipstick, got out her comb. Jackson had only half-lied: the bubbles were dissipating on their own. She was reaching to re-pack when her fingers brushed something odd, buried well down in her bag.

Something smooth and round and flat. Lisa frowned as she took from her bag a twist-topped brushed-steel jar, about the size of a powder compact, roughly two inches high. It was screwed shut, and four metal twists like spindly spider-legs were clamping the top to the bottom.

The seal wasn't perfect. Lisa saw residue where lid met bottom. Blue, metallic. It shimmered in the soft lighting around the restroom mirror. She looked more closely at it-- Was she imagining things, or had it _moved_--?

Then she saw: she'd touched it.

(Or _it_ had touched _her_.)

A pencil-line of indigo, an eyelash-trace, a nail-clipping. A tiny crescent of blue on her index finger. As she watched, it disappeared into her skin.

"What--"

She staggered, gasping. The jar fell from her fingers back into the depths of her bag. Lisa leaned helplessly against the vanity. It was as though someone had shouted inside her head, and the sound, her own voice, and _not_ her voice, was echoing--

_WHat what What whAt WHAT--_

She managed not to collapse. She focused on breathing, on staying upright.

_Jackson_--

She didn't know if she said his name or merely thought it. But it came back to her, booming inside her skull, pealing like cathedral bells much too close up, at a volume that shook the air from her lungs. As if his name were a command, as if it were bonding with her very bones, becoming part of her--

No thought. No. She reached blindly for her bag. She forgot her jacket. The soles of her shoes caught on the carpeting as she staggered for the door.

In the corridor outside, standing in a pocket of shadow between the powdery pooled light of two wall sconces, a man was waiting.

"Jackson--"

It wasn't Rippner. This man was wearing a black trenchcoat. The shoulders shimmered with rainwater. He boosted away from the wall and stepped into the light.

"Hello, Miss Reisert."

It was Robert Grant.

"I believe you have something I want," he said.

Lisa backed away from him, down the corridor. She opened her mouth to shout--

"Don't," he said.

Her voice turned to concrete in her larynx. _She couldn't speak. _She reached for her throat, shocked. For a moment, watching her, Grant seemed just as surprised and puzzled as she was--

Then, clearly, he said: "Come here."

(Like Jackson at St. Paul's, only very much _not_.)

Her feet moved her toward him. She went where they took her. She couldn't help herself. No one was around. No other patrons, no beleaguered theatre employees going to help with the locking-down. Looking past him, desperately, toward the lobby, her voice frozen in her throat, Lisa felt she was trapped in one of those nightmares where you can't scream, can't run. Grant had a knife in his hand. A short, serrated blade glinted in the dim light. It and her stomach seemed destined to meet--

To her left along the wall, between herself and Grant, she saw the light of an emergency exit.

She threw herself at it. Shouldered through a barred door, no startled honk of an alarm, into a bare, narrow, yellow-walled corridor, stumbling, her breath catching, through another door, and into a black, greasy, rain-wet alley. To her left she saw the traffic of Piccadilly Circus--

No: she saw an explosion of color and motion. Taillights swirled like lava; headlamps seared her eyes. The shops pulsed with glare. It was as though she could hear the huge animated billboard across the junction roaring its messages--

_Buy SANYO. Buy SAMSUNG._

For a second, she stopped. Transfixed by the lights.

_Drink COCA-COLA._

She stood, looking, frozen in surprise at the sheer primal terror she felt. That, and a sudden, ridiculous impulse-- the neon telling her--

_I need I want I'm craving McDONALD'S--_

Grant was right behind her. She felt his fingers brush her sleeve as she pushed away from the door and ran. A thin cold rain was falling. Her soles held on the wet pavement. For a second, his didn't. She heard him grunt as he slipped--

-- "Shit--!"--

-- and then she was sprinting, away from him, away from the shouting, seductive lights of the Circus. North, though she didn't quite know it.

*****

Rippner gave her a tactful five minutes. He had profound respect for Lisa's intelligence and practicality, but he understood the lingo, too: when a woman said she wanted to comb her hair, it could mean anything from "I've got a cowlick to tame" to "I'm going for a full makeover." In the box office, the lights went out. One of the theatre's bartenders pushed through a door to his left, to the right of the main entrance, opening an umbrella as he stepped out into the rain.

Rippner walked back into the corridor under the sign that said _Ladies_. No one around. An emergency exit on his right. Just before that, in a dim spot between wall sconces, he saw damp footprints, a moist sponging shoulder-height on the wall. As if someone had stood there, waiting--

Rippner frowned. He went to the women's lounge, stepped to the side, and, without hesitation, opened the door.

"Lisa--?"

Nothing. No reply. No breathing, no motion. Rippner looked in.

On the vanity to the left of the sinks he saw Lisa's folded jacket.

*****

Not only was Lisa running blindly, she was trying to run without looking. Every sign she passed, every piece of neon, every ad was a command--

_I must SEE the HIT OF THE SEASON I want a STEAK a PIZZA and NOODLES EGG ROLLS COFFEE and a SUB--_

Needing _money magazines souvenirs ice cream tickets,_ she joined the flow of people leaving a late screening at the Empire Leicester Square. To _follow_: she needed that, too.

Walking, half-running, within a rivulet of her stream of people, she entered Leicester Square station. The warmth on the water-spattered steps was sudden and muggy, the smell musky. Shoes and sweat and skin within wet sweaters and jackets. Ads were all around, on the walls. She forced herself to move at speed past the pleas of bestsellers, cosmetics, Ox Fam; she focused on the turnstiles, on taking her Travelcard from the front outer zipped pocket of her bag--

A tickling at the back of her neck told her to turn. Behind her, past the people moving in knots and singles toward the turnstiles, Grant was just reaching the bottom of the stairs. She turned away again, quickly, before their eyes met.

In the station concourse, she looked frantically for directions. To her right, signs called her to the Northern Line. To her left--

Piccadilly Line.

Piccadilly. Piccadilly Circus--

(-- the terror of the lights, all those lights, those signs like lava in the rain--)

"Jackson--" she said, out loud.

His name echoed in her head, along with the exhortations from the gods of the station. _If you do not touch in and out with your Oyster Card, you will be charged the maximum cash fare--_

_(--OYSTERS. She wanted OYSTERS--)_

He would be there, at the Criterion, waiting. One stop back, right? Piccadilly Circus station was there, right there, outside the theatre. She was at the waterfall downflow of the escalators to the Piccadilly Line when she saw Grant clear the turnstiles.

He saw her.

The escalator was half-packed with people, and the angle was steep. Lisa took her hand from the railing, stepped to the left on the slotted metal steps, began pushing her way more quickly downward, carefully, frantically, through knots of shoulders, past walls of jacketed backs. Shoves back her way. "Hey! Mind yourself--!" "Fucking tourist--!"

Tunnels toward the westbound platform. She ran into one as she heard the words--

_The doors are closing. Mind the gap. The doors are closing. Mind the gap._

She stepped onto the platform as the train pulled away.

Grant stepped out of the access tunnel next over, to her right.

A muffled roar behind her. Lisa looked at Grant. He looked back. He stepped onto the platform and came toward her. She turned and ran, against the flow of traffic heading to the westbound platform, through the access tunnel, back across the escalator concourse, into the tunnel leading to the train now opening its doors on the eastbound platform.

In the mouth of the tunnel she paused, just off the platform. She pressed her back to the tiled wall and looked back the way she'd come. No Grant. Not yet. He might have paused to check the WAY OUT, the traffic on the escalators leading back to the station concourse.

Maybe three dozen people left the train. Maybe two dozen got on board. Traffic was thinning. She wondered what time it was. Past eleven, likely. On the overhead, a man's canned, clipped voice was saying _--planned disruption to service at Covent Garden station. Alternate station: Holborn. Transport for London apologizes for any--_

A second voice, a woman's, the announcement Lisa had heard on the westbound platform:

_The doors are closing. Mind the gap._

To her right, from the access tunnel that would have been nearest the upward-bound escalators, Robert Grant stepped onto the platform. His eyes swept the platform, the cars of the train. He turned to go. When he was back in his access tunnel, Lisa dashed across the platform onto the train.

_The doors are closing--_

Empty promises. The doors remained open. Lisa looked back toward the tunnel at the far end of the platform, under the sign reading WAY OUT. She felt eyes on her, there in the train. Or maybe she was imagining that she did. She felt dizzy and sick and afraid, too. She didn't dare look at the ads above the windows. Peripherally: Lancombe, security services, a trip to Greece, something in her head shouting _YOU WANT IT ALL_. A trio of drunken young men slouched behind her. A handful of tourists perched tensely in their seats, messenger bags clutched in their laps. Two women, maybe service-industry workers, waitresses or cashiers, sat, pale and tired, in the car's unforgiving light. A big, middle-aged man in a rust-colored suede coat cradled a folded newspaper in the crook of his arm as he lounged in the seat to the right of the doors. Lisa stood with her bag hanging from her shoulder, gripping the vertical handrail just inside the car, looking back where she thought Grant would be--

"Close, close, close--" she whispered. A couple in their thirties scowled at her as they pushed past, boarding. The doors began to slide shut.

Two cars back, Grant stepped across the platform onto the train.

*****

The doors shunted closed. Before Lisa thought of clawing at the seam, of looking for an emergency handle, the train was pulling away into the tunnel heading north-east, away from Leicester Square.

She stayed where she was, braced against the handrail inside the doors. She looked toward the back of the car she was on, the door there leading to the next car back. She couldn't see Grant.

She got out her phone. She and Jackson had service over here; he'd made sure to check before they left. Screw the roaming charges. She found his number and pressed _dial_, then held the phone tightly to her ear, above the rumble and rush and metal squealings of the train--

A moment, a pause long enough to hold maybe four rings, though she couldn't be certain if she was hearing those rings or if the thing in her mind was simply spinning wishes into sound--

_Hi_--

"Jackson--?" she blurted.

_-- this is Jackson. Please leave a message._

She looked back through the train car to the rear door. A door after that. Another car. Doors. And there, after the train straightened coming out of the curve of the tunnel just east of Leicester Square, she saw Grant looking back at her.

A beep from the earpiece of her phone. Again the feeling that she was frozen in place. An awful, gut-punch fear. The rumbling, the clacking, the blackness beyond the windows of the doors--

-- a thrumming, a humming. Like _voices_--

"Jackson, I'm on--"

Looking back along the car, her eyes strayed to the window ads._ BENETTON. Colours, all the COLOURS OF APPLE-- iPod iMac iWANT-_-

"-- a train. I'm on a train, I'm on a train, I'm on a train. Something's wrong with--"

_-- wrong with voices in my her head voices like a hum like a thrumming of metal and wheels air and dust--_

Covent Garden station flashed by. _Disruption of service to. Transport of London apologizes for_. Feeling as though she might fall through the doors, Lisa closed her eyes against the sense of extra motion--

Above the noise in her head she heard the hiss of the line, the sound of her call to Jackson going dead.

*****

Rippner pushed open the barred door and stepped out into the rain. No sign of Lisa in the hallway of the emergency exit. No evidence of a struggle. No blood.

And no sign of her out here.

He checked the front of the theatre. Maybe she'd been shut out when the emergency exit closed behind her. Of course she hadn't.

Looking, blinking in the rain. He made a quick round of the Circus. Just before midnight, the patches of pedestrian pavement around the statue of Eros were emptying out as the post-casino, post-theatre crowd found its way to late suppers or bars or home to bed. She might be trying to get back to the hotel--

_Why doesn't she call?_

A moment of perfect, stupid realization: He'd turned his phone off before the play.

He fumbled it out of his pocket. The screen glowed to life in the drizzling dark air. He had one missed message. From Lisa.

_Jackson, I'm on a train--_

*****

Grant managed, between Leicester Square and Holborn, to pry open the doors between his car and the next, the one hooked to Lisa's. He was pulling at the door at the end of his car when the train pulled into Holborn. Lisa was still at the sliding doors of her car when the train came to a stop.

Grant abandoned the inter-carriage doors. He was two seconds, maybe three, behind Lisa when she bolted onto the platform.

*****

She wasn't anywhere near the theatre. Not that he could see. Ripper hit _dial_. Lisa's phone rang half a dozen times, and when she picked up the reception was terrible.

"Lisa--?" Rippner said.

_Jackson, help me--_

Her voice was a ragged whisper. He could barely hear her. "Lisa, where are you--?"

_I'm in-- tunnels-- I can't talk; I can't: he'll hear--_

Her words were garbled, shot through with static. In the background, Rippner thought he heard the rumble of a train.

"Are you in the Tube? What station? Lisa, tell me--"

_I'm not sure, Jackson. It might be-- I want to tell you, but my head is-- I think I'm--_ She stopped speaking. For a second, Rippner thought they'd been disconnected.

Lisa said: _Oh, God, he's here-_-

"Who--? Lisa, what station are you--"

A shriek of static. The line went dead. He tried calling her again, knowing it wouldn't work. Nothing. Not even a ring tone.

He stood for a moment, facing into the drizzling wind. He felt as though his heart had stopped. He called Carter.

"She's in a Tube station, John." This after only the briefest preliminaries. Carter, hearing his tone, made no protests about the hour or the weather. "Piccadilly or nearby. Charing Cross, maybe Leicester Square."

_I can be at Charing Cross in five minutes,_ Carter said.

****

"I think that was the last train, Lisa," Grant said.

She was backing away from him along the empty platform at Holborn, in the direction the train had gone. For the better part of fifteen minutes after leaving the train from Leicester Square, they'd cat-and-moused their way through the maze of tunnels leading to and from the platforms. He'd managed to keep her from getting to the escalators, trying to go up the stairs would leave her too visible for too long, and she hadn't thought to use one of the emergency call boxes. Or she had, and either she'd picked a dud or the station attendants weren't as quick to respond to her danger as the prevalence of CCTV in the Tube would lead people to believe. In any case, he knew there was something wrong with her. He could see it now, in her eyes, across the space separating them on the westbound platform of the Central Line. She wasn't simply afraid of him: scowling, in or close to tears, shaking her head, she seemed to be having trouble focusing.

His phone buzzed. He kept his eyes on Lisa as he answered it. "Robert Grant."

_Where are you?_ asked John Carter.

Lisa was nearly to the barrier at the mouth of the westbound tunnel. A white sign, a stick figure staggered by a lightning bolt: DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE. She bumped up against the barrier, started. She looked behind her, into the tunnel. She looked back at Grant--

Their eyes met. She was maybe thirty feet away. "Holborn station," Grant said. "Heading back to my hotel. Why, Carter?"

_Lisa Reisert has gone missing. Rippner is-- well, as frantic as he gets. He thinks she might be in or around one of the West End stations. He's checking Piccadilly; I've got Charing Cross._

"If there's another train, I can cover Leicester Square in addition to Holborn," Grant said. "Have you contacted the police?"

_Not yet. It's too early._

"Of course--"

Twenty feet ahead of him, Lisa Reisert climbed down off the platform and ran off into the darkness of the westbound tunnel of the Circle Line.

"Well, I'll be damned," Grant muttered.

_What's that, Grant?_

"Nothing, Carter. Bad reception down here. If I see her, I'll let you know." As he spoke, Grant felt wind at his back: the mouth of the tunnel at the platform's eastern end was exhaling, announcing, even before the telltale, distant rumble, the approach of a train.

_Thanks, Grant. Keep in touch._

"I will. Good luck."

He put his phone away as the final westbound train of the night pulled into Holborn and discharged the last of its passengers. From here to Chancery Lane, from there to St. Paul's. He didn't know where the trains went to roost for the night. He stood looking at the narrow spaces around and above the front of the train while a handful of men and women cleared the platform on their desultory way to the escalators. All alone on the platform as the doors closed and the train slid off into the westbound tunnel, the way Lisa Reisert had run, he said to himself: "Sorry, Lisa, old girl. I guess I was wrong. That wasn't the last train."

*****


	4. Chapter 3

Lisa ran into the westbound tunnel. She still had her bag, but she'd dropped her phone, somewhere back in the warren of platform-access tunnels at Holborn; she was keeping to the center of the tracks. That was the sum of her rational contribution to the process of fleeing Robert Grant.

The light from the platform fell away quickly to dust gray. Fifty yards into the tunnel, she was running in blackness--

_-- stupid, STUPID, stupid--_

Her head was burring with sound. The tunnel seemed alive with vibrations. A century's-worth of noises, trapped and whispering, clacking, squealing, screaming, metal on metal, hissing, rumbling--

_Rumbling_.

Behind her.

She stopped; she turned. She blinked into the light approaching from Holborn--

_-- was she moving toward it, or was it moving toward **her**--?_

She felt through the soles of her boots the trundle-hiss, trundle-hiss, trundle of acceleration. The light stretched its rays, filled the tunnel.

A train.

The beams from the headlamps pinned her in place. Like the molten glare of Piccadilly. Only now she had nowhere to go. She froze. Whatever was in her skull locked her eyes on the approaching light. She was wearing dark clothing (she was dressed, as Jackson had been, in theatre-casual, both of them in jeans and sweaters for the show at the Criterion); she couldn't think to run, to press herself to the tunnel's curving wall, even to throw herself as flat as possible on the tracks. She couldn't think to wave her arms and shout. All she could do was look into that light like a sun trapped underground and think _miss me, miss me, miss me--  
_  
"Miss--?"

-- _me miss me_--

A hand tugged at her right sleeve. Lisa turned her head and found herself looking at the thin pale face of a young man. Compared to the sun of the approaching train, a lamp in his hand cast a lesser light, a moon's glow.

"This way, miss."

His face winked into blackness as he turned away. The light of his lamp bobbed at a trotting pace, heading deeper into the tunnel. Lisa followed.

The light turned to the left and disappeared. Wind pushed at Lisa's back as the approaching train compressed the air from the tunnel. No horn. No squeal of brakes. The iron ribs of the tunnel focused the rumbling directly into the bones of her head. She felt herself slowing-- something seductive in the light breaking over her shoulders, hypnotic, the original advertising, _light_, a call to growth, leaves rearing toward the sun, crops ripening, a _way to the surface, a way out, a way OUT WAY OUT--_

"Here, miss."

His voice was quiet but clear above the pounding roar of the train. Thin hard fingers caught her wrist and pulled her to the left.

They were in the terminus of a second tunnel, facing south. The smoky gray light of the lamp revealed rough brickwork, plaster patching, dirt and dust: the mouth of the tunnel was blocked all the way to the floor, and nearly to the ceiling. In the center of the brick wall was a rusting iron door dark with greasy soot. The young man braced himself-- Lisa saw him more clearly now, as the rounded walls of the terminus gathered and focused the light from his lamp: he was about Jackson's height but much thinner; his hair was brown and trimmed close to his scalp; and he wore gray coveralls cinched at the waist with a heavy leather toolbelt-- and shoved down hard on a metal handle at the door's left side. The handle gave way; the door opened.

"Through here, miss."

He held the lantern before him and ducked to step through the door. As Lisa followed, the train from Holborn roared by behind her.

*****

Lisa said to the young man's coveralled back. "Who are you?"

"Jim, miss." He glanced over his shoulder as he walked. His voice was polite, a bit shy. "My name's Jim."

He didn't ask her name in turn. She had the feeling that he considered such asking a breach of manners. She had the feeling, then, as well, that he already _knew_--

"Where are we?"

Asking, she stopped walking, leaned her shoulder against a curved wall. Tiles golden-cream, hatched crosses in pine green, in the light of Jim's lamp. Cool and gritty-smooth through the weave of her sweater. She was feeling tired. Deeply tired. She was in no shape to analyze, but at a guess she might think it a combination of fear, flight, adrenaline, and whatever the hell was sharing space with her mind. Now that she was away from the visual shout of the surface and the bright interiors of the train cars, it wasn't as bad. Less to want, here in the dark. Less calling to her. All that remained was a sort of vestigial sound, a background noise like whispering. If she listened carefully, she nearly caught words--

"Aldwych, miss. That is where you wanted to go, isn't it?"

"I'm at the Aldwych. Jackson and-- A friend of mine and I: we're staying at the--"

She paused. The words seemed to lead her thoughts in circles. Jim came back to where she stood. The lamplight cast wider as he turned, and Lisa saw that they were on the platform of a Tube station. The tracks were to their left. The wall against which she was leaning was grimy; the ads and posters were worn or torn away--

CADBU ILK CHOC ATE

EINZ SAUC AT DINNE TIME

_LET US GO FORWARD TOGETHER_

The man in the poster had a jowly bulldog's face. His shoulders were squared in a heavy black coat. From across the tracks, his dark eyes stared fiercely at her. She should know him, Lisa thought. If it weren't for the whispering on the platform, she would--

"Who is that, Jim?"

He came closer with the lamp. "That's the Prime Minister, miss. Mr. Churchill."

"I thought-- wait: isn't Tony Blair--"

Behind them, the way they'd come, a moan echoed down the tunnel. It wasn't just in her head. Lisa started.

"What was--"

A banging, now. Like a sledgehammer on a fifty-gallon steel drum. The sound bounced and thudded along the dirty tiles of the platform.

"Jim, what was that--?"

He was looking where Lisa was looking, toward the north end of the platform. "That's Mary, miss. She's lost her little girl. She comes down sometimes looking for her."

The moaning again, closer. And words Lisa couldn't quite catch--

"Shouldn't we let someone know?"

"They know, miss." In the light of the lamp, Jim's face was very still. His eyes on hers were reasonable. For the first time, Lisa saw how much they resembled Jackson's eyes: very clear, very blue. Unworldly. "Best to leave her be."

He walked off, down the platform. Lisa followed his light, a new question knotting inside her--

"You work for London Transport, right? The Tube--?"

"The Great Northern, Piccadilly, and Brompton Railway: yes, miss." The phrase was a mouthful; he seemed to take pride in saying it.

Another banging. This one sounded nearer still. No moaning followed, but words did, still not correctly formed. Lisa heard them practically inside her head. They dropped like bits of concrete-- _bricks, chipped mortar, dirt, and dust_-- between her thoughts. She had to struggle to form her next query:

"Don't they issue you walkie-talkies--?"

"Not far now, miss," Jim replied.

They were at the southern end of the platform. Jim climbed down onto the tracks. The smoky light from his lamp seemed to run up against the darkness at the mouth of the tunnel and dead-end there. He held out his hand.

"Where are we going?" Lisa whispered.

"Aldwych, miss."

His eyes were Jackson's eyes. His face was thinner, but his smile when he smiled was Jackson's smile. Not his smirk. Gentle and boyish and knowing. Lisa took his hand. His fingers were rough and bony and reassuringly strong. As cold as the tiles along the platform wall.

She climbed down off the platform and followed him, where he and his smoky light led her, along the tracks, into the tunnel.

*****

Robert Grant waited on the platform of Holborn station for an emergency stop that never occurred. The final train of Saturday evening and Sunday morning glided off into the westbound tunnel and disappeared with no subsequent, startled squealing of brakes, no alarms, no overhead announcements regarding accidents, stoppages, or calls for medics. No doubt London Transport had its code for such events-- _Mr. Smith to the station office, please, _or similar sidespeak-- but, as it happened, Grant, standing alone near the voltage warning at the head of the tunnel, heard nothing but the announcement that the station would be closing in fifteen minutes.

_Where had she gone--?_

If the train had hit her, the engineer would know, right? People weren't invisible; they were solid chunks of flesh and bone. And Lisa Reisert had been messed up. Stoned or drugged on top of being panicked and afraid--

Stoned on _what_?

She was clean. He'd watched her at Gordon's; he could tell. She could pack away her share of alcohol, but her skin was good, she wasn't twitchy, and her pupils weren't dilated: she wasn't a user. She wasn't shooting up. She wasn't in the restroom at the Criterion doing a line before she and Rippner continued their evening. (As far as Grant could tell, Jackie-boy was all the high she needed.)

So why the animal panic in her eyes before she turned and ran into the tunnel--?

The stories made the rounds after the Keefe mission. Sure, Rippner had counted on taking a beating-- all part of his cover, and Grant had weathered his own share of such shit on jobs-- but the thrashing Lisa Reisert had handed Jack the Ripper was the stuff of eternal water-cooler legend. So why would she run in terror from a guy Rippner's size who held only half the knife Rippner had waved in her face?

"Shit--" he whispered. The nanites. Why he was after her in the first damn place. The things could get inside your head. If his hunch was correct, and Becker had passed them to her at Gordon's, then--

"She touched them," he said to the empty platform. _The container was leaking._ "Son of a _bitch_--"

He edged past the barrier, the sign with the electrocuted stick-man, and climbed down onto the tracks. The last train had come and gone. The station was closed. He had an L.E.D. flashlight on his keychain; he got it out--

"Hey--! What do you think you're doing?"

Grant turned. Approaching him on the platform was a man in a white hard-hat and a blaze-orange boiler suit.

"I, umm, I--"

Grant stumbled as he climbed back onto the platform. Leaned drunkenly into the signed gate.

"I think I missed-- Whazzat the lashtrain--?"

"You're not catching it that way, boyo." The man was nearly to him. "You can't be here. Station's closed--"

"Right--" Pushing off from the gate, Grant doubled over. He reached up under his coat for the knife handle hanging from the sheath below his left arm. He unsnapped the retaining strap with his thumb, gripped the handle tight. "Jus' lemme out, and I'll--"

"Whattya have there, Mark--?"

Grant re-strapped his knife, looked. Five more men in hard-hats and boiler suits, some of them carrying bulging tool bags, were approaching along the platform.

_Maintenance crew. _

"Fella here's short of a train," the first man said.

Laughter from the crew. A half-cheery, half-annoyed "dumb, drunk bastard." As if on cue, lights came on along the tunnel. The _inside of the tunnel_. Grant stared into the suddenly illuminated maw, the ribbed, curved length stretching away like the dust-gray gullet of a giant snake. No sign of Lisa Reisert. None--

"Come on." Strong fingers gripped his shoulder. "Let's get you out of here--"

-- _you dumb, drunk bastard_.

*****

Grant stood outside the freshly locked exit of Holborn station, the black accordion gating at his back, the blank dark stares of two newsstands boarded for the night before him. He listened to the stationmasters making their way back down below, a clanking at the turnstiles, a clunking of footsteps on the stilled escalator. Both of them had walked him out. Obviously, he wasn't as harmless-seeming a drunk as he'd hoped.

He stepped to the corner, looked west along Holborn to Bloomsbury Court.

_She couldn't have made it that far. She couldn't-- _

Right about now, those maintenance bastards should be finding themselves a grisly surprise on the westbound tracks. Leave them to it. Better that the dumb American drunk not stick around and become the number-one suspect in a killing on the Central Line.

The night's drizzle had turned to the morning's cold rain. Grant pulled up the collar of his coat, hunched his hands into his pockets, and started the hike back to his hotel. Away from Holborn station and the bookstore in Bloomsbury Court.

*****

"Jackson," said Carter, "this is Stanley Burton. He's our security contact at Transport for London. Stan, this is Jackson Rippner. It's his friend who's gone missing."

Rippner shook the hand the man called Burton offered him. He'd only just arrived at the Carters' suite at the Savoy. He was wet and cold and angry and frustrated, and he was in no mood for social pleasantries. Only fifteen minutes ago he'd been ejected by the closing crew at Leicester Square station, having run there after checking the myriad platforms underground at Piccadilly for signs of Lisa.

Burton read his tension. He was a short, square man, practically a block of muscle. His hair was going; what remained of it, he'd trimmed to gray thick bristles. Sharp blue eyes watched Rippner from gristly sockets in a broad, middle-aged face.

"Tell me something, Mr. Rippner--" Speaking, Burton gripped Rippner's hand for a moment longer than absolutely necessary. He had a gently rolling accent, not quite British, not quite Irish. "-- did you take more nonsense, growing up, over the fact that you're Polish-American, or because of idiots calling you 'Jack the Ripper'?"

His expression was equally curious and wry. Rippner felt a jolt of surprise, followed by respect. He recognized what the man was doing. He'd come bursting in, bristling with tension, and Burton was telling him to take a breath, to calm himself.

"I'm from Chicago, Mr. Burton. Being Polish there is practically a requirement."

"Ah, the second one, then. I'm Welsh, myself."

His tone implied companionable suffering. Burton released Rippner's hand, stepped aside. There in the sitting room behind him, a young man and woman in jeans and sweaters were setting up a makeshift command center of cables and laptops. Claire Carter was helping them. She looked over, offered Rippner a sympathetic smile of greeting.

"Stan and his helpers are patching us in to the CCTV system from London Transport," Carter said. "Tonight's video files as well as the live feeds from the underground stations."

Burton stepped over cables, checked screens and connections. "We could set up back at the offices, where the walls have ears as well as eyes, or Terry and Jane here can link us in where we stand. Closer to where your friend's gone missing, and they can shunt us past the traffic on the main servers. Fellows in programming dump cartloads of junk files through the system this time of night. Am I right, Jane?"

Jane nodded above a laptop screen. She had hair of indiscriminate dark blonde pulled back in a ponytail. She had also the tousled, slightly sleep-bewildered look of a girl summoned from bed, but she appeared to be enough of a tech-head to be getting a buzz out of hacking her own company's systems after-hours. "That you are, Mr. Burton."

"To our advantage, then," Burton continued, "three things: one, your friend-- Lisa Reisert, is it?-- has only now gone missing; two, we don't need to deal with a bored policeman telling us it's too soon to file a missing-persons; and, three, we've had no reports of anything untoward on the tracks tonight. Some sort of debris on the line east of St. Paul's: maintenance is checking on it; that's all. To our disadvantage: Miss Reisert could be anywhere from here to Cockfosters, assuming she stayed in the Tube. Making matters worse, John, Mr. Rippner, is one of London Transport's dirtiest little secrets: less than two thirds of a station's cameras are operational at any given time, the feeds from those cameras are unreliable on the best of days, and tonight the main feed from Leicester Square was scheduled for during-hours maintenance--"

"That's it," interrupted the boy called Terry. He was pale and black-haired, and he looked young enough to be Burton's grandson. "We're in, Mr. Burton. Feeds and bleeds, all screens."

"Thank you, Terry. One thing before we begin, just minor--" Burton looked from Carter to Rippner. "Might we see a picture of Miss Reisert--?"

The obvious thing. The most obvious. Rippner had no photo of her; he hadn't seen her put her passport in their room safe at the Aldwych. He looked to Carter.

Carter's face was very still. He went to the laptop that was most likely his, called now into service as part of their surveillance ring, and typed a password.

"There," he said.

Rippner looked, as Burton and the others did, at the JPEG file opening in a preview window from screen to screen around the room.

Two years ago, give or take. It was the first picture Rippner had taken of her. Lisa was crossing the street from the Lux Atlantic, on her way to lunch. It was a sunny Miami day; she was wearing a business dress in airy off-white linen. She was looking to the left, toward traffic--

-- toward _him_--

-- as she stepped between the taxis, the cars with their trunk lids open, loading and unloading, outside the hotel. He tried to tell himself that he was holding his breath because she might spot the camera-- less than the size and thickness of a credit card-- mounted on the back of the visor in his Beemer. He tried to tell himself that it was the danger of discovery making his heart beat faster, the bright daylight, a new, potential mark, a new mission--

He spoke into the mouthpiece of his phone as he transmitted the photo to Carter: "That's her, John."

A pause on the line. Then Carter said: _That's a go, Jackson. We'll start a file for her on this end. Good luck._

*****

"This picture is two years old," Carter added, in the here and now, quietly.

"Has she changed since then?" Burton asked.

He looked at Rippner as he spoke. Rippner was still looking into the blue-gray eyes of the girl in the photo that Carter had kept, encrypted, on his laptop.

_A salmon Caesar and a breadstick. A glass of iced green tea. No sugar. That was what she had for lunch._

"Her hair is a little shorter," he said._ I'm hers now; she's mine._ "Otherwise, she hasn't changed."

*****

Lisa existed only where the light defined her. She realized gradually, as she and Jim walked along the tracks, the dust shuffling against her boots, that the line separating her from darkness was thinning. How long they had been walking she didn't know. It might have been minutes or hours; the whispering was back in her head, here in the tunnel, and it was interfering with her sense of time.

She was tired. She felt herself dissipating into the blackness around them. No other way of describing it. Her legs were invisible to her, and she was losing feeling in them.

"Can we rest for a minute, Jim?"

Only when she saw that he had dropped to his haunches next to her did she realize she had fallen to her knees.

His expression was patient, his voice gentle. "Of course miss."

"Stay with me--?"

"I'll be right here, miss."

An exchange: the darkness around them for the darkness behind her eyelids. Lisa felt her shoulder impact against the dust-cold floor of the tunnel, between the tracks, and then she felt nothing else at all.

*****

"I've got something, Mr. Burton."

It was one-thirty a.m. Jane was handling the final feeds from Holborn station. Burton and Rippner and the rest left their own laptop screens and crowded in around her.

"Piccadilly Line," she said, "northbound service, eleven forty-two p.m."

On the screen, at a down-angle to the right, a train approached the camera, glided to a halt. The doors slid open, and in the grainy jerk of the black-and-white feed a woman bolted from the front car. Jane froze the image.

"There--"

"Can you enhance that?" Carter asked.

"No need," Rippner said. He knew the clothes Lisa had been wearing. He knew the bag she carried. He'd know the set of her shoulders, the lithe line of her back, anywhere. "It's her."

"There's more," Jane said. She unpaused the file. Lisa disappeared from the camera's range of view, vanished into one of the access tunnels leading from the platform. A second later, maybe two, Robert Grant burst from the doors of the car behind the one Lisa had exited.

"Whoever he is, it looks like he's--" Jane, seeing Rippner's face, stopped speaking. Rippner was staring at Carter.

"Do you know that man, Carter?" Burton asked.

"He's one of mine, Stan," Carter replied. He looked numb.

"Tell me you didn't know about this, John," Rippner said.

From his expression, Carter recognized the danger he was in. Rippner was looking at him with death in his eyes. At that very second, Carter had to know that he, Claire, Burton and his team: all of them were in terrible danger from the wiry could-be demon in their midst. "I didn't know, Jackson. I suspected he might be--"

"You _suspected_ him?"

"I thought he might be on the take; I wasn't sure how; I'm still not--"

"You suspected him, and you-- you fucking _called me,_ and didn't let me know, and you let me bring Lisa along as _bait_--?"

Claire unceremoniously shouldered in between them. No badly veiled bullshit threats for her. She leaned in for a closer look at Jane's screen. "Is there any more footage from Holborn?" she asked calmly.

"Nothing that shows Miss Reisert, ma'am." Jane stammered. She was still watching Rippner. "The cameras at Holborn are--"

"Grant, John," Rippner said. "He's not here. Where is he staying?"

"The Radisson off Seven Dials. Room six-twelve." Carter met Rippner's eyes grimly. "Maybe you should talk to him."

"I'll do that." A notepad and a pen lay on the table near Jane's right elbow. He took the pen. Retractable ballpoint, _TRANSPORT FOR LONDON_ engraved in white on its black barrel. Rippner put it in his jacket pocket and left the Carters' suite.

*****

It was a twisting but short walk to the Radisson Mountbatten, through dark Covent Garden to the rain-slick cobblestones of Seven Dials. Access to the room floors was by key card only, but Rippner carried a Visa that was truer to its name than most credit cards: it gave him a ten-second green light in the elevator, which was more than enough time to punch the button for the sixth floor. Quiet, very quiet, when the doors opened. Late, or too early, by tourist standards, and the Mountbatten wasn't known as a party hotel. Grant was in a deluxe double near the end of the corridor, facing out over narrow Monmouth Street.

Rippner was alone in the passage. He sidled up to the door of Grant's room and listened--

A voice from inside. Not the television. Grant. He was saying--

"-- here in case Carter calls. He's expecting me to be here. Yes, he might call the room-- Morgan, would you-- You said yourself you didn't want me getting in the way down there--"

_Morgan. Bill Morgan_.

Rippner slotted his all-access Visa into the door lock. A pinprick of green light glowed in the tasteful night-gloom of the corridor.

"-- in case she-- No, I know: I know people can't outrun those fucking trains--"

The moment before Rippner pushed down on the door handle: such moments always reminded him of the old saw about seeing your life flash before your eyes when you die. A second of poised, frozen evaluation, when you chose whether to cross or to walk away from a threshold as figurative as it was literary. Grant might be standing just inside the door with a gun. The door itself might be booby-trapped.

Such hesitation was pointless. You acted, or you didn't; you died, or you didn't. All Rippner had to ask himself was whether he was acting blindly, out of rage, over Grant's potential role in Lisa's disappearance.

He wasn't. He felt calm. His heartbeat was as slow and steady as his breathing.

He pushed down on the handle, opened the door slightly. No chain. He entered Grant's room.

*****

Light from the room itself, but the entryway was dark. Rippner didn't start, seeing himself reflected in a wall-length mirror to his right. Grant was directly ahead, sitting in one of the room's two black-leather-padded chairs. On the round-topped table to his left sat a tumbler and an open bottle. Glenlivet. Ice and amber liquid in the glass.

He saw Rippner. "I'll get back to you," he said, and folded his phone. He set the phone on the table. "Hello, Rippner."

"Grant."

Grant reached unsteadily for the glass. "Aren't you going to thank me for being here--?"

"Where is she, Grant?"

"-- I mean, hell, I could've run." His words resounded wetly in the tumbler as he drank. "But you're Carter's little rat terrier, aren't you, Jack--? His rat-fucking-_terrier_. Anywhere I might've gone-- shit, there you'd be--"

"Why was she running from you?"

Grant set the tumbler down hard enough for it to slosh. He looked at Rippner with bleary offense in his shark-brown eyes. "She was messed up, Jack. I was trying to help her."

"Messed up on what, Grant? What did she have? What were you trying to get from her--?"

"Whoa-- hey, stop. One quesh-- question at a--" Grant tipped the bottle Rippner's way. "You want some of this--? I think there's another glass--"

"What were you trying to get from her?"

Grant poured himself more whiskey. "There are forces at work here, Jack. There's _money_ at work here. More money than Carter and our bullshit company pay, that's for damn--" He drank, frowned. "I need more ice."

A black ice bucket stood on the room's dresser, to Rippner's right. Grant rose, glass in hand, and crossed to it. When a knife appeared suddenly in his free hand, Rippner wasn't surprised. Every second you spent wondering how weapons came to materialize was a second closer to being wounded or dead. He sidestepped the thrusting blade. He took the ballpoint from his jacket pocket, clicked it open, and slammed the sharp, fine tip deeply into Grant's throat just south of his jaw.

Grant gagged, coughed, clawed with his empty hand at the tube sticking from his neck. Rippner took the knife from him, set it on the dresser. He shoved Grant against the wall and looked into the man's wide eyes.

"A variation on a trick I picked up from Lisa," he said. Grant stared at him, wheezing. Panic and shock in his expression. He couldn't speak; he couldn't breathe. "She speared me in the trachea. I've hit your larynx, Bob. Unless I miss my guess, that's fatal."

For a moment, Grant focused. He tried to twist out of Rippner's grip. His hand went toward the knife now lying on the dresser. Up close, he smelled nearly nothing like whiskey: he'd been faking the drunkenness. Rippner braced one hand on Grant's jaw and the other on the back of the man's head and broke his neck.

Grant went limp. His panicked breathing stopped whistling past the hole in his larynx. Rippner lowered him to the floor. He took the knife. It was a fixed-blade Gerber fighting knife, balanced farther to the back than Rippner preferred, with a serrated blade. Rippner frowned, momentarily, in distaste. A serrated blade might do more damage, but it tended to snag on clothing or bone. A straight-edge blade was cleaner, quicker. Still, he couldn't be picky: he'd been on vacation, for Christ's sake. He wasn't carrying. He took the knife, found the sheath for it hanging underneath the chair where Grant had been sitting. He strapped the knife, sheathed, to his torso, under his jacket. He took Grant's phone, noted the last number Grant had called, and pocketed the phone without hitting _redial_. _Bill_, the name above the number said.

"Not very creative, Bob," Rippner muttered.

He washed his hands in the bathroom and left the room and the hotel. He was on his way north and east, through the maze of narrow streets quaint by day, eerie and quiet by rainy night, leading from Seven Dials to Holborn and the bookstore in Bloomsbury Court, when his own phone vibrated in his jeans pocket.

"You're out a manager, John," he said, before Carter had a chance to speak.

_Where are you, Jackson?_

"Heading to a bookstore in Bloomsbury Court. On Holborn, west of the station. Lisa and I followed Bill Morgan there yesterday; Grant was on the phone with him when I--"

_Jackson_--

"It's my one lead, John. Contact Professor Becker; make sure he's safe. And you'll want to get a cleanup crew over to the Radisson--"

_Jackson, listen: it's about Lisa. That maintenance crew Burton mentioned, near St. Paul's--_

Rippner stopped walking. He stepped into a paned doorway, out of the rain, stood facing the black windows of the shopfronts across the way. His heart hacked bluntly at the base of his throat. He half expected to hear the beat echoing along the wet cobblestones.

"Have they found her?"

_They're, umm_-- Carter hesitated. Rippner heard him swallow--

*****

_They're not sure_, Carter said.

*****


	5. Chapter 4

"What do you mean they're not sure?" In the shelter of the doorway, Rippner's words resounded dully. He looked out at the wet black cobblestones. "Do you need me to identify the body, John?"

The street surface, scarred with repair, worn by millions of feet. Wheels, hooves. Paving to clay to wet black layers of city. Sewer lines, water lines, phone cables, electricity. History and pestilence. Blood, manure, and bone.

_They haven't found enough of her,_ Carter said.

Rippner's voice was dead in his own ears: "I don't understand."

_The driver of the second-to-last train from St. Paul's said he saw what he believed was garbage on the tracks east of the station. Cardboard, he thought. The derelicts drag it out sometime. He didn't have time to stop; he hit it. He thought he heard something hard-- concrete pieces, maybe, small ones-- bumping up along the undercarriage. He called it in. The last train came through, and then the maintenance crew Burton mentioned went out._

_They said-- Jackson, what they found-- they think it was the body of a woman, Caucasian, between twenty and forty years of age. Brunette. Petite. They said it was as if she shattered when the train hit her. Shattered, and then the last train passed through, and the rats were already in it when the crew arrived on the scene._

"Shattered--" Rippner echoed, hollowly, to the empty street.

_Yeah. Like a block of glass_.

"Or ice."

Said Carter, in realization and horror: _She had part of the freeze-tech compound. It must have leaked_.

"We don't know that, John. We don't know if it was Lisa."

_They found her passport, Jackson._

Rippner felt his back bump up against the door of the shop. They hadn't been able to see on the feeds from the CCTV where Lisa had gone after Holborn. St. Paul's was just two stops to the east, on the Central Line. As his brain went numb, he heard himself say: "Someone could have taken her bag."

_What did Grant say, Jackson? Did he know--?_

"Did they find the rest of her bag?"

_They think it was hooked and dragged away by one of the trains. Jackson, focus: Did Grant say anything to you about Lisa?_

Rippner said softly: "Are you asking me if Lisa stole the compound, John?"

Carter hesitated, the good manager of managers, the decent man, trying to remain tactful. _Was he trying to get it back from--_

"Stop," Rippner said. No threats. No shouting. He kept his fury coiled inside him. He knew he was still too much in shock to feel his grief. "She wouldn't have been in this if it weren't for you. We both know that. Contact Becker. Make sure he's safe. Ask him if he's missing anything. Keep me informed about-- the woman on the tracks."

_Where will you be?_

"I told you. The bookstore. Bloomsbury Court."

*****

The traffic on dark Holborn was sparse. Crawlers walked or staggered in pairs or groups for the next club, or home. Empty cabs prowled; those with passengers darted between the ready-steady-go of the traffic lights like glistening black beetles. A drunken shout bounced now and again, call and wild reply, between the buildings. It took Rippner less than fifteen seconds to jimmy the lock on the bookstore door, using a thin strip of metal that had supported the crease in his wallet.

He stepped over the ankle-level sensors for the door chime, guided the door to a quiet closing behind him. He stood for a moment like a ghost, absorbing the stillness of the place, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom. Nothing moved. Ahead of him, he saw light, just a trace. He stepped to the right, to the last aisle of the shop, and looked back toward the stockroom he'd looked at briefly two days ago. The door was closed now. Light shone from the crack between door and linoleum floor.

He watched the light as he approached the door. No interruptions, no shadowy passings. No one moving in the stockroom. He held his ear an inch from the pale green panel and listened. A rumbling came and went, distantly, but he heard no sound just beyond the door itself. The handle moved easily in his grasp. He entered the stockroom.

It was much as it had been two days ago: a landscape of steel shelving, books, cardboard boxes, and dust. Only now, on the floor near the northeast corner, a Coleman battery-lamp glowed white, right to the right of a hole in the floor, round and large enough for a large man to crawl down through. It had been covered over two days ago with a pallet and boxes; Rippner saw now the pallet itself and the skid marks on the floor where it had been pulled away from the hole. He'd wondered where she'd come from, the bad-tempered redhead who'd surprised him back here while Lisa waited for him in the shop; now he knew.

He stepped to the hole and looked down. Nothing but blackness. He lifted the Coleman lamp by its handle and knelt by the hole, lowered the lamp into it.

The shaft itself was steel or iron, ribbed at regular intervals. At Rippner's end, someone had tried to block it with concrete fill, to a depth of maybe six feet; the fill had been chopped or scraped away. He could see below the level of the fill metal rungs leading downward. Those rungs were aged and dirty; the rungs where the fill had been were stainless-steel bright, affixed to the rough wall of the shaft with strong hex-headed bolts. Rippner had just stepped out onto the first rung when, far below, something moved.

And, he realized, his was not the only light in the shaft.

Someone was climbing up.

Rippner stepped back out of the hole. He placed the lamp where he'd found it and moved to the side opposite the shaft, so that the person climbing up would be facing away. He unsnapped the locking strap holding the knife he'd taken from Robert Grant, gripped the handle. Waited just to the right of one of the sets of steel shelving.

The light from below cast itself in lengthening shards as the climber neared the surface. Rippner's heart beat slowly. His breathing was calm. His eyes were on the hole in the stockroom floor, and when Bill Morgan emerged from it, wearing a hardhat with a miner's light on it, he wasn't surprised. Morgan switched off the light. He set the hardhat on the floor next to the Coleman lamp.

Then he reached into the pocket of his oilskin jacket, took out an automatic, and fired a shot at Rippner. Behind himself, that quickly, past his own left bicep. The slug struck a spark off the shelf near Rippner's left temple. In the second before Morgan fired again, Rippner threw himself through the stockroom door, back into the shop. The second slug bit splinters from the doorframe in the wake of his passing.

"That must be you, Rippner," Morgan said. "You're not shooting back."

A rustle, a click. A beam of light stabbing out into the darkness of the shop from six feet up. Morgan had put the hardhat back on.

The shop's bookshelves were pass-through, not solidly backed. Morgan looked from the aisle he was in to the aisle two over. The beam from his lamp struck off the dull spines of books like the rising sun glinting off of skyscrapers. It glanced off the dark gray-brown of Rippner's jacket. Morgan fired.

Rippner cried out, fell into the shelves. A crumpling, thudding tumble of books. Then a slow shuffling sound as he dragged himself down the dark aisle, gasping and whimpering in pain, pulling more books down as he tried to stand.

"The problem with never carrying guns, Rippner," said Morgan, as he left his aisle and moved over to the one in which Rippner was dying, "is that eventually you encounter someone who does. And then you're stuck with just a--"

Save for the books on the floor, the row was empty.

Morgan arched around the abrupt and shocking agony of a serrated knife-blade burying itself in his liver. Behind him, Rippner whispered, as he twisted the gun out of Morgan's hand--

"-- just a fucking knife, right--?"

Morgan tried to butt Rippner's face with his hard-hatted head, but by now the blade was out of his liver, and Rippner was hauling him backward by the throat, a wiry forearm like an iron bar compressing Morgan's windpipe, and Morgan was off-balance, his torso arched, as Rippner brought the knife around in his free hand and stabbed him, quick hard punches with the blade to Morgan's exposed belly. One-two-three would have done it, should have done it, only now, for the first time since Carter had told him of the body on the tracks, Rippner was thinking of Lisa--

-- four-five-six, rapid-fire, _the bastard should have known not to shoot,_ seven-eight-nine, and he was going limp against Rippner, _she was missing, she was gone, not enough even to identify, and the rats in the filthy black tunnel near St. Paul's feeding on her,_ ten-eleven-twelve, Morgan's corpse sliding heavily to the floor, _St. Paul's, and I saw you there as well as here, you dirty fucking shooting son of a-- _

The shop door opened. The chime sounded.

"Last time I let you give me shit for not locking that door."

A young man's voice, grumbling to itself. A fumbling in the dark at the front of the shop. A paper rustling, the clunk as a full can of soda bumped up against something solid.

"Nothing's open, Bill," the voice called. More familiar now. Rippner remained where he was. The knife was in his hand; the blade was clear of Morgan's torso. The voice came closer. "Not even fucking Subway. Got a couple crappy sandwiches from a news shop open late on Shitbury-- Shaftesbury-- whatever. Hope you like egg salad, you asshole--"

He came down the far aisle, toward the stockroom door. To Rippner's left. When the young man stepped into the space between the store's aisles and the stockroom, Rippner said:

"Hello."

It was the young man who'd been at the shop two days ago, he of the lousy haircut who'd tried stupidly to help Lisa and Rippner find books by Leslie Charteris. He started when Rippner spoke. He turned and stared. He saw Morgan's body on the floor and said, "Holy shit--"

Jackson Rippner was not a terrorist, but he knew, he _knew_, the uses of _terror_. The kid dropped to the floor a paper bag heavy with sandwiches and cans. He didn't then reach for a weapon. He saw the knife in Rippner's hand and took a cringing step away.

Rippner grinned at him.

If Lisa hadn't been missing, if she might not be dead, mutilated, ground to icy pulp and food for rats, he might not have done what he did next. But he was Jackson Rippner, and he understood _shock_.

He hauled Morgan flat on his back on the speckled floor. He slit open Morgan's sweater and, that quickly, Morgan, too. And with the swift practiced ease of someone who'd studied the anatomy of the creatures he killed and the weapons with which he killed them, he rammed the blade of Grant's knife in up under Morgan's diaphragm and cut out his heart.

"The _fuck_--" the kid stammered. "Oh, Jesus--"

"You're next," Rippner said. Morgan's heart was warm and slick and solid in his hand. Blood dripped from it, from Rippner's fingers, to the linoleum floor. _The bastard shouldn't have shot. _Guns were for cowards. _He shouldn't have shot._ Not with Lisa missing. He tossed Morgan's heart at the kid, underhand, casually. He let the rictus of his grin spread to his eyes.

The heart struck the kid's coat and fell wetly to the floor near the dropped bag from the news shop. The kid stared at it, and then at Rippner. His breath whistled in his throat; his chest heaved. Rippner took a step closer, and the kid let out a sound like the bleat of a terrified deer and ran for the front of the shop.

The Ripper listened for the chime as the boy crossed the threshold. The whisk of the door swinging open. Then he ran after him.

*****

He found something akin to primal joy in the chase. He loved to run; he was built for it; he was good at it. His stride was swift and light, his footing sure, on the gray rain-slick sidewalk along Holborn. The boy was half a block ahead, near enough to catch, but Rippner paced him without closing the distance between them. Stringing him out, letting hope and uncertainty blend to toxic sludge with the adrenaline in the kid's blood. As rodents were wont to do, the boy in his panic retraced his last path: down Shaftesbury to the wide intersection with Charing Cross Road, where he looked the wrong way at the crossing and nearly affixed himself to the front of a honking cab. He pelted on down Shaftesbury, past the news shop at which he'd likely bought the cruddy egg-salad sandwiches, now dark and locked; he veered off to the right, on Wardour Street, and led Rippner into the lingering, leering neon of Soho on a too-early Sunday morning.

A sidestreet, narrow. A side door from a club opening. A doorman or bouncer in white shirtsleeves helping a blonde girl in ratty boho low fashion, a celebrity, possibly, into a cab. The door behind him had yet to swing shut. The boy Rippner was chasing ran through it, into the club.

"Hey--!"

The doorman released the girl and turned toward the club. Rippner swept the man's legs and smacked into the doorframe the face of a second bouncer, a big, buzz-cut guy, on his way to help.

Inside the club, Rippner slowed immediately to a stroll. The venue was tastefully dark, which was good, because by the look of things its decor was still mired in the Sixties. No strippers, though, and the place smelled good. No overwhelming funk of sweat, smoke, and watered-down booze. The kid had stumbled into something exclusive. Which meant that Rippner had roughly a minute before someone called the police.

He took from a cluster of glasses at the bar's end a seven-eighths-gone pint, to the looks of several pairs of lazily curious eyes-- no doubt wondering _who_ he was, not _what_-- and looked ahead of him, as he walked, glass casually in hand, for traces, a smoke-trail of panic.

There. A narrow staircase in the far corner. Frantic motion, a pounding of soles on carpet, heading up. Rippner set the glass on the nearest table, hearing behind him, now, voices quietly angry and officious as the bounced bouncers asked of the bartenders "Where did they go--?", and went up the stairs.

Another bar on the second floor. Blue lights highlighting black shadows. Quiet music, instrumental. A hallway, doors at intervals, closed. And another steep flight of carpeted stairs to Rippner's immediate right, leading up.

Resounding with footsteps. Rippner ascended.

*****

Seth Patterson had nowhere to go but out. There was a door to his left at the top of the stairs, but it was locked. The landing he was on led back to rest rooms. On his left, as he faced down the stairs, waiting for death to arrive with a serrated blade in its hand, was a black, rain-streaked window reaching from just under the water-stained ceiling nearly to the floor. Seth tested it. Pulled at the rounded rung-handle. A flaking of dust, of old cream-colored paint, as the window lifted in the frame. As his pursuer's head emerged from the well of shadow in the stairs, Seth looked for one awful second into the man's clear inhuman eyes and then climbed out into the darkness.

Wet brick. A ledge slick and slimy with city grime, exhaust, pigeon droppings. He knew he was dead. His heartbeat would shake him free of the building; he couldn't climb along an edge this narrow. On his fourth creeping step, he missed his footing, and--

The knuckles of his flailing left hand rapped against metal. Rungs, gripped. A black ladder leading upward, to the roof. Panting, Seth climbed. To his right, his pursuer was emerging from the window. He looked at Seth, and again Seth saw him smile the death's-head grin from the bookstore.

He'd killed Morgan. Morgan the fucking Terminator. He killed him and cut out his heart.

He cut out his _fucking heart_.

It was as though his feet had been amputated, or as if both of them were attached to the same leg. He couldn't feel his hands for the cold and the pounding of his heart. Seth slipped when he reached the roof. His shoulder impacted on wet grit.

"You're next," said a voice in the rain.

He stood and ran. Lights of a street to his left, stabbing upward against the rain. His boots slipping and pounding on the gravel and tiles of the roof. And ahead of him--

-- _oh, Jesus_--

-- an ending, a building opposite. A gap, black, inestimable, between this roof and the next--

A street between the two? An alley? How far? God, how _far_--?

Seth ran, and, blind with rainwater and tears, launched himself from the roof's edge.

A shadow might have passed him on the right as he jumped. A hand might have tapped his left shoulder.

He nearly broke his right knee, striking it on the edge of the roof opposite the one from which he'd leaped. His knee slipped then, the right one dropping and then the left, and his belly folded around the roof's edge. He slid backwards, the wind punched out of him, into the the gap between the buildings. He thought he saw a flash of light as he lost his breath. His fingers scrabbled and clawed at wet shingles and dirt. The skin of his fingertips tore. His chest went off the edge.

His fingers found purchase and held.

He hung for a long moment, shaking, not breathing, with his legs dangling in the air fifty feet above an alley in Soho. He waited for the serrated blade to punch into the base of his skull. He waited for it to slice the backs of his straining wrists. He waited for the voice again--

_You're next._

Nothing. No sound but the rain, a distant thumping of club music, a whisper of tires on wet pavement below, from the street. He looked up, and the man from the bookstore wasn't there with his knife and his terrible eyes, waiting.

Seth hauled himself onto the roof and sat, shaking. He was alone. The man who'd killed Morgan was gone.

*****

Amy Kendrick had just gotten to sleep when her phone rang. It was Morgan's turn in that bloody station tonight, but her body had locked itself into a night-shifter's hours, and settling herself before the sun rose was proving well-nigh impossible. So when she looked at the clock and saw that it was half past three, she kept none of the snap and venom from her voice:

"What?"

_Amy? Christ, Amy--?_

She didn't bother with the obvious retort: _Pick one, you stupid fuck._ It was Seth, and he might be one of the world's premiere science-whiz morons, but for now she focused on the fear in his voice.

"Seth, what's happened?"

_Morgan's dead. He's dead, Amy. Morgan's dead. He's dead._

Amy sat up. "How, Seth? What happened?"

_That man from-- that man with the girl who wanted the Saint books_-- Seth was nearly sobbing, from shock or cold or both. _He came back to the store. He c-cut his-- he cut his heart out, Amy-- Morgan's dead--_

"Where are you now?"

_On a roof. I don't know where-- Soho, I think--_

"Is he there? The man from the store?"

_No, he isn't fucking here. I'm still alive._

"He let you go. Seth, listen: can you get down?"

_Yeah. I think. I--_

"Get back to the hotel. Lose your coat before you do."

_Why? It's cold--_

"We'll go tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll go to Marks and Spencer, and I'll buy you another coat, Seth."

_Why should I-- It's so fucking cold--_

"Seth, he let you go, but he's planted a trace on you. A bug. Please lose your coat. Will you do that for me, before you come in? Seth, will you do that?"

A harsh, wet intake of breath on the line. _Y-yes--_

"Good boy. I'll call Roland. Get yourself back here."

*****

After he left the boy on the roof, Rippner circled back to the bookstore. The door was closed but unlocked; the fallen books were undisturbed. Morgan was lying on his back in a pristine pool of congealing blood. His hardhat had rolled six feet to the left, away from the gore. Rippner picked it up, tested the lamp. It cast its lighthouse beam toward the storeroom. He put the hardhat on and walked back to the hole in the storeroom floor.

Quick confirmation: nothing moving below, as far as he could tell, at the bottom of the rough metal shaft. Rippner stepped onto the first rung and started to climb down.

He descended, at a guess, between seventy and eighty feet, and when he reached the bottom, his feet touched down on macadam, not dirt or London clay. He was in a stairwell of sorts, a squared enclosure. A doorway opened to his left. He stepped through it into a rounded tunnel, its walls inlaid with dirty white tiles. An arrow on the wall ahead of him pointed to the right, above the words WAY OUT. Rippner went left. The beam of his mining lamp was lost in the darkness ahead, swallowed as the tunnel opened into a greater space beyond. At the mouth of the tunnel was a drop of possibly three feet. Rippner stepped carefully down from the tunnel's mouth into the greater space beyond and found himself where the platform of an abandoned Tube station had once stood.

The rail line, naked at knee-level before him, ran east-west. The tracks were in good repair; the tunnel at either end of the platform was open. The Central Line, west of Holborn Station. He looked to his left, along the length of tunnel in which the platform had stood. The white tiles remained, even though the platform itself was gone. He shone his headlamp onto the nearest roundel set in now-grimy red on the wall and saw in chipped and dirty black the words:

BRITISH MUSEUM

Bootprints in the dust, leading along the floor of the tunnel where the platform had been. Three distinct patterns, sizes, weights. One large male, likely Morgan; a smaller male, possibly the kid Rippner had chased; a third, shod in Red Wing boots, practical but lighter and, by the length of the stride, shorter than the other two. Likely female. All three sets looked as though their makers had been encumbered by weights balanced across their shoulders or against their hips. Rippner followed them. At the far end of the platform tunnel, an access tunnel opened to the left. To Rippner's right, just inside the tunnel, was an alcove like the one he'd left after descending the ladder from the bookstore. The doorway of this one was blocked solid with mortar and bricks.

The dust became more intermittent, and the footprints did, too, just past the skeletal black tip of the arrow pointing the WAY OUT. This time, Rippner took the arrow's advice.

The mouth of the tunnel leading away from the vanished platform of British Museum station opened into a space like an underground cathedral, or at least like an underground church. The beam from Rippner's headlamp reached neither the far wall nor the ceiling. To his right, the frames of elevator shafts and dust-gray stairs ascended into darkness.

Also to his right, more immediately, sat an array of electronic equipment and heavy tools in cases or leather bags. The largest piece of electronica looked like a camera mounted on a heavy tripod; a data cable led from its housing to that of a monitor like a sonar scope resting on what looked to be its own black plastic carrying case. Both units were plugged through a surge protector into a mobile field generator. The generator was humming softly; its casing was warm.

Rippner looked again at the device like a camera pointed at the dusty white tiles--

_Imaging equipment._ Some sort of deep-level scan, maybe, like an MRI.

Something buried in the wall, here or elsewhere in the station. Something Morgan and his cohorts had yet to find.

_But what--?_

In his pocket, Rippner's phone thrummed. The dust in the air muffled the echo from his voice, there in that man-made cavern: "Yes?"

_Where are you, Jackson?_

"Have they found her, John?"

_No_. No "I'm sorry," though, either. The identity of the woman on the tracks east of St. Paul's was still in question. _Becker is safe. He's here; he wants to talk to you. Will you come in?_

"I'll be there. I'm in British Museum station," Rippner added.

He could hear the frown in Carter's tone: _Where--?_

"It's beneath that bookstore off Holborn. Bloomsbury Court. They're looking for something down here. Whoever Morgan was working for. Is Burton still there?

_He's checking in with his team at St. Paul's; he'll be back--_

"I'll be there soon, John."

Rippner hung up. Before he left the underground passenger hall of British Museum station, he took from one of the leather tool bags a heavy mallet and dealt the lens of the wall-pointed camera a cracking blow. He also checked the trace he'd put on the boy on the roof, back in Soho. According to the micro-fine grid on the screen of his phone, the bug hadn't moved. Either the kid had died of fright or someone wiser and calmer had told him to ditch his coat.

No matter. Rippner knew where the rats came to work.

*****

He didn't return straight to the Savoy. He stopped first at the Aldwych. The guarded "Good morning, sir," from the dark-haired young woman on duty at the front desk told him all he needed to know about his appearance. Asking whether Miss Reisert had left a message would only arouse her suspicions further. Even in passing, Rippner looked, he knew, like a man who had committed an act of violence.

He went to the room, carded the lock, entered. Hours before housecleaning was due, but no signs of ransacking. No messages on the room's main phone set, either. The bed was still unmade; the sweater Lisa had worn to the Tate and to Gordon's still hung over the back of the chair nearest the bathroom.

He looked through the bathroom door and over the sink saw her reflection in the mirror. She was touching up her makeup. She caught him looking and smiled--

Rippner closed his eyes, shook his head sharply. When he looked again, the mirror reflected the edge of the shower stall, white tiles. Nothing else.

Rippner stripped, took a quick shower, brushed his teeth. He picked out clean clothes. Another pair of jeans, a black sweatshirt. The sweater he'd worn to the theatre and through the night was a dark knit in marbled brown and gray, and it showed little of Morgan's blood. Just a stiff rust edging on the cuff of the right sleeve. His jacket, however, as the expression on the receptionist's face downstairs had told him, was another matter. The stains on the right sleeve weren't obviously blood, and rainwater had diluted what gore there was, but the jacket as a whole was a wet, muddy ruin. He put it back on anyway. He guided the door of the room quietly closed behind him, made sure it locked, and returned to the Savoy.

*****

Opening the door, Claire grimaced as she saw him; she gave Rippner plenty of space to enter the suite.

"Your husband owes me a jacket," Rippner said quietly. He shrugged free of the jacket and handed it to her. Claire took it gingerly.

"He owes us both an apology," she replied. "He owes Lisa an apology, too."

While she found a pariah's space for his filthy outerwear in the entryway closet, Rippner took out his phone and cued up the photo he'd taken of the kid on the roof in Soho. A flash like a pocket of lightning in the dark raining air. A face blank with fear, eyes trapped wide open in the shutter's blink.

Claire looked. "Do you want me to start a trace on him?"

"Please." Rippner handed her the phone. He let her go first, then, into the data center her sitting room had become.

Carter was standing, cup in hand, near the room's coffee service. Burton and his team were gone. Professor Becker was sitting on the room's cream-and-green sofa. He rose when Rippner entered.

"Mr. Rippner, I am so very sorry," he said. He was wearing a gray cardigan over a button-down white shirt, no tie. He looked worn out, tormented. "There has been a terrible misunderstanding. I didn't trust Mr. Grant. I was beginning not to trust Miss Hobart--"

"-- with good reason, unfortunately, as it turns out," Carter interjected.

"I thought Miss Reisert was your partner. A fellow agent," Becker clarified. "I suspected Miss Hobart was trying to steal my nanites. I left a sample of neutral material in my room safe, here at the hotel. The live sample-- the nanites themselves-- I placed in Miss Reisert's bag."

Rippner stared at him. "At Gordon's--"

"Yes. When she dropped her napkin. Agent Grant and Miss Hobart were watching my every move; it was my one chance to-- Mr. Rippner, your poor friend--"

Rippner looked to Carter. "Do they know it's her, John? Other than the passport, do they know--?"

"No. Burton says it's the eyes--"

"What about the eyes?"

"They haven't found them. They say the rats are particularly fond of--"

Claire cleared her throat. She shot Carter a stabbing glance. "Would you like a cup of coffee, Jackson?"

"Yes, please."

"Milk, no sugar, right?"

"Yes."

Becker looked ashen. On a flickering silent screen, he would have been seconds away from driving the blade of a knife into his own breast. Once she'd poured Rippner's cup for him, Claire turned to the professor and gently laid a hand on his forearm. "Coffee, Professor?"

She guided him back to the sofa. Becker re-seated himself. "_Bitte_." His voice was as small as the word.

"What we know," Rippner said, "is this: There is an unidentified body on the tracks east of St. Paul's station. Lisa is missing. The nanites are also missing." He took a sip of his coffee. "Have you seen Miss Hobart since last night, Professor?"

"No."

"Do you know her cell number?"

"Yes."

Rippner passed him the handset from the suite's phone. "Would you call her, please?"

Becker dialed, put the handset to his ear. Listened, frowned. He terminated the call and handed the set back to Rippner. "Her provider says that her phone is out of service."

"That's her on the tracks, then," Rippner said. "Not Lisa."

"I mistrusted her." Becker's eyes were haunted, perplexed. "I did not wish her dead."

"Are you missing anything else, Professor?" Rippner asked.

"Am I--"

"The second part of the freeze-tech compound. Where is it?"

"Imperial College, Jackson," Carter said. "It's safe. It's being stored there in a high-security--"

Rippner and Claire turned to him with matched looks of equal and scathing skepticism.

"Call security over there, John," Rippner said. "Tell them Professor Becker is coming over to check on his compound."

*****

The compound was gone. Of course it was. In the security office at Imperial College, Rippner stood and watched with increasingly weary eyes as the video feed from yesterday afternoon showed Professor Becker and his assistant enter the lab, open the safe, and walk off with the second part of the freeze-tech. The stamp in the corner of the recording showed the time as sixteen forty-four.

"That is not me," Becker said. Rippner didn't mind the man stating the obvious. "And that is not Miss Hobart." That was obvious as well: at a quarter to five yesterday evening, Rippner had been watching Robert Grant refresh Miss Hobart's glass at Gordon's Wine Bar. "This woman is more slender."

Rippner focused his tired eyes more closely on the screen. The woman and her companion, a man as tall and nearly as gaunt as Becker, were almost to the glass doors leading out of the science complex. Something about him seemed familiar, but Rippner found his attention focusing itself on the woman--

"That-- that could be Rosemary Wheeler," he heard himself say. "She specializes in disguise. She can do incredible likenesses in thin-molded latex. And see-- there--" He pressed the _back_ arrow on the recording, let the false Becker and Hobart again walk away from them on the black-and-white screen. "She favors her right leg." The slightest hesitation in the woman's right-hand stride. Nearly imperceptible. "She has a limp--"

Carter and Becker were both looking at him now.

"I gave it to her," Rippner told them.

*****

The rain had stopped. A chill pre-dawn mist had settled in its place. As Professor Becker climbed into the cab for the ride back to the Savoy, Carter took Rippner aside.

"I'm out a manager, Jackson," he said. "You said it yourself."

He met Rippner's eyes as he spoke. Rippner respected him for that.

"You'll owe me for this one, John. Unless Lisa doesn't turn up safely. Then you won't owe me anything at all."

_Dead men owed no debts._ Carter said: "Promise me you wouldn't hurt Claire."

Rippner looked back at him levelly. "Claire or your daughters: you know you don't have to ask me that. I know the code."

_And you never sought revenge or retribution against a man's family or loved ones._ Rippner got into the taxi.

*****

By the time they get back to the Savoy, Burton had returned. He was seated before one of the laptops Jane and Terry had set up earlier that morning, his eyes scanning the screen, his broad face grim. Claire was on the phone, making early and elaborate demands of room service.

Burton looked up from his screen. He reached to his right and held up a clear plastic zip-topped bag. Inside was something flat and brown, about the size of a very thin paperback. The interior of the bag was smudged with sticky red.

"We'll keep this out of the hands of the American consulate for as long as we can," Burton said to Rippner. He tossed him the bag. "Miss Reisert's passport."

Rippner turned the bag slowly in his hands. He recognized Lisa's passport wallet. The red material was blood; he recognized that as well. He felt his hands start to shake.

"Ironically, now," Burton continued, "even if enough time had passed to file a missing-persons-- we're still over half a day short, unless they've changed the regs-- the police would likely throw it back in our face, since Miss Reisert's last known location was in a Tube station."

Rippner closed his eyes. Just for a moment. "Then we'll go looking--"

"Where, Mr. Rippner? There are over three hundred miles of tunnel, and the system is live now. We can't shut it down for--"

"Do you want me to contact her family, Jackson?" Carter asked, before the weariness and frustration in the room came to a head.

"No. If the time comes, I'll talk to them." Rippner opened his eyes. _Maybe Reisert would aim for my head this time._ He looked at Burton, as tired as Rippner was, the horrors of what he'd seen on the tracks outside St. Paul's still fresh in his thoughts, and asked the older man, more reasonably: "What might someone be looking for in British Museum station, Mr. Burton?"

Burton looked surprised. He relaxed slightly in his chair. "Besides rats and derelicts...?"

"Mm hm."

The tension eased from the room. Rippner sat down on the sofa. Becker did, too. Carter took a chair across the way.

"British Museum was one of the Tube stations used for the storage of artwork and antiquities during both World Wars," Burton said to his audience. "Not just from the British Museum-- obvious, that-- but from the Tate and the National Gallery as well."

"Things went down," Carter said. He focused his dark eyes pointedly on Burton. "Did everything come back up, Stan?"

Burton's eyes sparked wryly in their gristly sockets. "We're going from missing persons to treasure-hunting now, John...?"

"Someone is," Rippner said. "Do you have any idea what might have been left behind-- forgotten--"

"Say 'hidden' or 'concealed,' Jackson," Claire said. "That's what we're all thinking."

"-- concealed in the station after the wars?" Rippner finished.

A knock at the door. Claire went to answer it. She signed for a cart laden with plates and glasses and steel-covered serving dishes, and when the door closed behind the well-tipped young man who'd brought the feast, Burton got up to investigate.

"Not with any great degree of precision, Mr. Rippner," he said, crossing to the cart and lifting first one metal lid, then another. "But I know someone who might." He bit the corner off a piece of toast, smiled as he reached for the jam. "And I promise you won't like him."

*****

*****

_Is anything the matter, Mr. Mason? _the buyer asked.

He always sounded so patient and kind. Now he seemed honestly, not just personally, concerned, as though Roland were a sixteen-year-old on a learner permit calling to say that he'd crashed the car. _We went in the ditch, Dad, but we're fine. No one was hurt_--

Except for Morgan.

"We've had a setback," Roland said. "Nothing insurmountable. One of my men had a change of heart."

Some times more than others Roland was glad he and the buyer never met face to face. He knew what he needed to know of the man-- Makis Kazandzoglou, aged fifty-three, a Greek national, political connections, extremely wealthy. Fortune derived from ownership in several EU energy conglomerates and, more locally, from shrewd dealings in the labyrinths of the olive-oil trade. Offshore bank accounts with legitimate numbers. And a passion for his Greek heritage, the rightful place of Greek antiquities.

_Ah, that's too bad. I hope you paid him fairly for his time._

"He won't be complaining."

_Have you replaced him?_

Ken Warwick. God bless his freshly minted psychotic heart. The problem with mounting a clandestine, illegal operation in a major metropolis was that if something went wrong, you couldn't simply call the police and a crime-scene cleaning crew. When Jackson Rippner effectively disemboweled one of your men in the bookstore you were using as a front to access an abandoned Tube station, you were the one left holding the paper towels and the bottle of bleach. Or your prime lifter and electrician was, and she wasn't happy about it.

"I'm not doing this on my own," Amy Kendrick had said. Rosemary looked legitimately sick, and maybe Amy enjoyed that. Seth, who'd refused to set foot back in the shop until Morgan's earthly remains were gone, would be no help. Amy called Ken Warwick, harmless Ken, her soft-bellied, balding, badly dressed contact at Transport for London. _Try stopping me,_ her eyes dared Mason and Rosemary, as she faced them with her phone to her ear. _I've had enough of this shit._ "Something awful has happened, Ken," she told her phone. "Something truly horrible. Can you help me?" Not "us." Not simply "Can you help?" That plaintive "me" closed the deal. He was at the bookstore in under fifteen minutes. Mason saw the straighter set in his shoulders as he walked in. Warwick might not know exactly what Amy wanted of him, but he knew enough to leave his life as a stammering cube-dweller flunky at the ankle-level door-chime. Without a word, Amy walked him back to the area just outside the storeroom and showed him the body. Warwick went pale. Roland saw his eyes go dead.

"We can put him in a rubbish tip tonight," Warwick said. "Three or four streets over."

Amy smiled. The next morning, what remained of Morgan would be on a garbage barge, on his plastic-wrapped, weighted way out to sea. For now, he was neatly packaged, and the back of the bookstore smelled like bleach. Spring-floral scented. Nice touch, that, Mason had to admit. Warwick had gone to the grocer's three blocks down Holborn. Scented made it seem as though they had laundry to do, not a murder-scene cleanup.

"Yes, we've found a capable replacement," Roland told the buyer.

_And the work is proceeding?_

They could replace the scanner Rippner had smashed. They had a spare. "Yes. We'll have your goods to you in three days."

_Wonderful. Stay in touch, Mr. Mason._

Mason set the handset back in its charging stand. He closed his eyes and let his thoughts still themselves behind his lids.

The job had never been simple, but it had been exhilarating. A conjunction, a confluence, of events. A summit of nations to discuss the freeze-and-mold technology invented by Wenzell Becker. A nation, or nations, Greece among them, angry at not being invited. Greece. A coming exhibit at the British Museum, _Hidden Elgin: Lost Treasures of the Parthenon._ Pieces once considered too politically controversial for general exhibition, the museum wanting to emphasize its role in the stewardship of Greece's past, now that Greece herself was opening a Parthenon museum on Greek soil. And a current exhibit at the Imperial War Museum, London, _Traitors through the ages._ As part of the exhibit there, the journal of a former junior curator at the British Museum; within the journal, descriptions of pieces the museum had stored, for reasons of safety, in the Underground during the Second World War. Pieces that may-- or may not-- have been returned to the museum after the Luftwaffe's bombs stopped falling on London.

On impulse, Roland had stolen the journal. In its pages he found, as described in cribbed and fading ballpoint, the perfect piece. Light enough for two people to carry by hand, striking in that it was sculpted from black marble, a statue the journal-keeper regarded as "a breathtaking tribute to pride and folly."

The Elgin _Icarus_.

A month ago in his apartment in New York, Mason had rallied his troops for a new undertaking, a fresh and lucrative scam.

It was to be a two-part sale, with an appeal to pride and nationalism. The heritage angle: always good for more money. Mason had gotten word of the freeze-tech summit. He had the list of invitees. Greece, perpetually furious over Britain's possession of the Elgin Marbles, "acquired" by Lord Elgin from Athens in the nineteenth century, was not on said list.

So, very simply (or not), Roland and his people would obtain one of the "hidden Elgins" and the freeze tech and sell both to a Greek buyer. Greece would become a major player in the freeze-tech market, and Britain would be humiliated-- without even knowing it.

Mason sat forward on his leather sofa as he spoke to Bill Morgan, Rosemary Wheeler, and Amy Kendrick, the last perpetually slouched in a matching leather overstuffed chair. "We'll tell the buyer that it's a demonstration of the tech. That we've left the British with a fake _Icarus_. Again, it'll be an appeal to his or her pride. The satisfaction of knowing something that the British don't."

"I see one obvious problem," Rosemary Wheeler said.

"Only one?" Amy Kendrick countered sarcastically.

Rosemary ignored her. "We might be able to steal components of Becker's technology, but the whole thing, Roland--? The machine itself? Not likely."

"That's correct," Mason said.

"So we're going to sell them enough of the freeze-tech to make them _think_ it works."

"Mm hm."

Rosemary continued, half frowning: "By providing them with a demonstration. By stealing the _Icarus_ and leaving a freeze-tech-molded replica in its place. In the British Museum."

"Not quite. The museum won't be formally issuing a catalogue for the exhibit. There will be no need for a replica."

"Roland, what are you saying--?"

"The Elgin _Icarus_ has been lost for over sixty years. We have the means of finding it. We're going to offer the Greeks the statue and enough of Becker's freeze technology to make them think we're worth a hell of a lot of money."

"Then, like the _Icarus_ sixty years ago, we'll disappear," Amy Kendrick said. "Before the Greeks realize the technology is incomplete and the British have _not_ been humiliated. Right, Roland?"

"Right."

*****

In the here and now, near the till at the front of the bookstore in Bloomsbury Court, Rosemary Wheeler touched Mason's elbow. "Ken wants to know what else he can do to help."

Mason opened his eyes. "It's 'Ken' now?"

"He _is_ shaping up nicely."

"You sound impressed."

Rosemary smiled slyly. "Give a mouse a taste of blood...."

*****

*****

She wasn't certain how long she'd slept, but when Lisa woke, she saw the light. Round and bright as the sun. The ground rumbled against her side and shoulder and hip as it approached.

"Jim--?"

Jim said nothing. He wasn't with her. Lisa sat up, slipped as she tried to stand. She'd been dreaming, and not quite, her mind filled with darkness as soft as dust. She'd felt his hand on her hair, Jackson's hand--

-- _Jim's_ hand--

-- reassuring and gentle. "Sleep all you want, miss. I'll be right here."---

-- and now he was gone, and the tunnel was filling with roaring and glare. Lisa was up, on her feet, shaking. She took a backing step away, then turned and--

"Stop--!"

Over the rumbling, a man's voice. Lisa froze, though she could tell: she was doing so of her own volition. Whatever had been in her head earlier was weakening. The whispering seemed distant now, just wisps of sound.

Before her, the rumbling eased to a long, low metallic squeal. Maybe thirty feet away, the light seemed to lower slightly away from the top of the tunnel, as though it were perched on the skull of a heavy animal settling itself for the night. Twenty feet away, the light stopped moving completely. Lisa shielded her eyes with her hand and looked through the glare at the windshields and red flat snout of a locomotive. A man looked out at her from the windshield on the right. He leaned from a window at his shoulder and called again: "Stay where you are, please, miss."

Below the light at the front of the train was a door; it opened, and the man stepped down onto the tracks. He was stocky, middle-aged, broad through the gut and shoulders and chest. The glare struck off his red hair, and he looked like a bear in uniform. Dark blue jacket and trousers, white button-down shirt, tie striped diagonally in red and navy.

He came toward Lisa slowly. "Would you do something for me, miss? Would you step to your left, please? You're nearly on the hot rail."

Lisa looked, saw the bar slightly higher than the paired rails of the line less than a foot from her right boot. She moved to the left. The man smiled. His eyes were light hazel. In his broad face, they twinkled in relief.

"That's better. Are you with the film crew?"

"I beg your pardon?" Lisa's voice came out as a whisper. Her larynx and tongue seemed not to know one another.

"Are you homeless?" he asked. She heard through the tact in his voice other suggestions: _an addict, a trespasser_ (which, truth to tell, she was), _insane_.

"I'm lost," Lisa said.

*****

His name was Harry. Harry McKay. "Technically," he said, as he helped Lisa up into the driver's cab of the locomotive, "I'm not supposed to do this. You're meant to ride in the cars with the rest of the ghosts." She started at that; he winked. "Don't worry; I won't tell if you won't."

He shut the forward door, and Lisa pressed herself back, away from the levers and switches Harry needed to make the train move, as they started to back slowly down the tracks. He picked up and spoke into the black fist-sized puck of an old radio transmitter anchored on a spiraling cord: "Martin?"

From a speaker above his head spoke a younger man's voice. A blend of boredom and irritation: _Martin here. What?_

"You missed something on your walk. South of the far platform, on the tracks."

_I missed nothing on my walk, you fat--_

"See you when we get there, old son."

_'We'--? Who 'we'? Harry, wha--_

Chuckling, Harry clicked off the radio.

*****

Harry opened the side door of the engineer's compartment for her when they came to a halt, and as Lisa stepped onto the platform, he said: "Welcome to Aldwych station."

She stood on the twin of the platform she'd left with Jim. Only this one was alive and lit, in repair. The cream-and-green tiling was moderately clean; no posters flaked on the walls. There was a ticketing office to the right, a window caged with iron bars, its frame and the frame of the door next to it weathered but richly shining oak. A young man burst from the door and crossed the platform toward them.

"That's what you found, Harry?"

He was dressed, as Harry was, in a blue suit-uniform, only he was roughly half Harry's width. He bristled with energy, from his brushy black hair to his black bushy brows to his whipcord frame. He glared at Lisa, and then at Harry, with black-brown eyes.

"You're picking junkies off the tracks now--? You're letting them ride in the--"

"She's not a junkie, Mart," Harry said.

"She's not--?"

Only one way to prove it. Lisa pushed up her sleeves, showed Martin her forearms, the smooth untracked crooks of her elbows. "I'm not a junkie."

Martin lost a bit of his bristle. "Is she with the film crew, Harry?"

"No."

"How did you get in here?" Martin directed the question at Lisa, and he spoke more calmly.

"I'm not even sure where this is," Lisa replied. "What is this place?"

*****

In 1994, Aldwych station, on a spur of the Piccadilly Line running south of Holborn, closed for passenger service. Since then, the station had been maintained for use in films. To that end, Transport for London staffed the station with a skeleton crew who checked the tracks and kept the rolling stock in working order. Normally the trains were a 1970s vintage; the locomotive in which Harry had stopped for Lisa was special, a classic from 1938.

"They've trotted her out for--" Harry paused. He called over his shoulder to Martin. "That last lot, what were they making again--?"

"_Atonement_, I think," Martin replied. He was hovering over a hissing electric kettle and three chipped white mugs behind the steel-topped table where Lisa and Harry were sitting, in the former ticketing office that now served as the keepers' office in Aldwych. They were waiting for the police to call down from the surface. Not the metros, but a London Transport squad, and Lisa wasn't to be arrested for trespass, but she would need to go to the hospital for a tetanus shot and a test for something called Weil's disease. Just procedure.

And then they, the security people from London Transport, could figure out where she belonged. She had no phone; she had no passport (and, strangely, she didn't find that disturbing). Harry found in the leather bag she carried a wallet with money, credit cards, and a driver's license: per the cards and the license, she was Lisa Henrietta Reisert of Miami, Florida.

(When he reached into her bag, she nearly shouted "Stop--!" _Why--?_)

Beyond that, she found herself comfortably blank, and, more oddly still, strangely at home. She felt secure within the station's curved walls, here under the earth. The voices in her ears were a seashell whisper; they told her she was safe. She _belonged_.

Martin opened a green Tetley's box and lowered by its white tagged string a tea bag into each mug. Three bags, Lisa realized. Three mugs. When Jim came, he'd want tea, too, wouldn't he? "We're supposed to be standing in for Balham in that one." He snorted. "No one'll believe it. The angles are all wrong."

"It's been a busy few weeks," Harry said. "First them, and now there's this new one, this Maybury picture--"

"_Best Years of Our Lives, _they're calling it."

"We'd go mad without your head for titles, Mart, and that's a fact."

"Then there's IMDB right there on the computer, old man."

"That's the crew I thought you were with." Harry looked at Lisa. "They've been in and out with their permits for the past month."

The kettle whistled. Martin poured. Lisa said, to both men: "I met your other co-worker."

"Who's that, then, miss?" Harry asked.

"Jim."

Water splashed past the rim of a mug. Lisa looked: Martin was hoisting his brushy eyebrows at the spill and the tea.

"You saw Jim?" Harry prompted.

"Yes. Why?" Lisa tried a smile. "Is he usually invisible?"

"You spoke to him? He spoke to _you_--?"

Martin brought the mugs over on a tray. From the corner of her eye, Lisa saw him mouth at Harry a word: _Junkie_.

"Yes." A shiver like a tracing of cold light fingertips passed between her shoulder blades. "He seemed shy. Is he dangerous--?"

Martin laid out spoons and paper napkins and a handful of packets. Sugar, Sweet-n-Low. He looked at Harry. _Insane junkie._

"Not exactly," Harry said, carefully.

"He's been dead for sixty years," Martin said.

Lisa stared at him, stunned. "He--"

"Oh, well done, Mart."

"Can't you see, Harry? She's having us on."

Lisa's eyes blurred with tears. She tried to push back from the table, but she was dizzy, suddenly, and she knew if she tried to stand her legs wouldn't hold her. Harry caught her hand, there on the cold metal tabletop. He squeezed her fingers.

"Miss--?" He looked at her, patiently, until Lisa looked back at him.

"Who was he?" she asked.

"He fought in the war." Harry's voice was gentle. "He was wounded in the head. My dad and granddad worked the Piccadilly Line; they used to tell us about him. Honorable discharge, came to work as a track walker in the Tube. He liked being in the tunnels. Said he felt safe there. Sweet, kind fella. Good worker. Only that injury to his skull made him pass out sometimes. Go comatose, almost. One night, he must have fallen on the tracks. First train out of Holborn caught him, just west of the station. Twenty-three years old he was, miss. He died."

"He died in nineteen forty-three." Martin sat down, reached for a packet of sugar. He stirred that packet's worth, and two more after it, into his tea. "So, you have a fella?" he asked Lisa.

Lisa started. She frowned at him. "Do I _what_--?"

Harry looked at Martin incredulously. "First you call her mad, and now you're chatting her up--?"

"I'm asking who might be missing her. And--" He leaned to the side, closer to Harry, farther from Lisa. "-- get past the fact that she _is_ crazy, and she _is_ having us on, she's not bad looking. I mean, look at her. Bit of a clean-up, and she'd be--"

"Martin--"

"I mean, how am I supposed to meet girls-- I mean, _anyone_--working here? Get a job in the Tube, my mum said. Proper job, proper hours, she said. And here I am stuck in a phantom station with you, you fat bastard, and a toy train on a track going from nowhere to nowhere, and crazy junkies talking to ghosts--"

"Drink your tea, Martin."

Martin sat back and drank his tea. On the wall near the door, the phone rang. Harry answered it.

"The transit police are here, miss," he told Lisa.

He walked her to the surface, moving surprisingly lightly, given his bear-like build, up a long, spiraled flight of stairs lit at intervals along their dingy gold walls by bare bulbs in wire cages. He took her up, not Martin, no doubt wanting to keep his young co-keeper from asking of their guest, the confused young woman who had talked to a ghost, a phone number she couldn't quite remember.

*****

*****

Since Lisa had disappeared, Carter had been phoning contacts, people he knew with eyes on the street. Now Rippner called his own. No one had seen a woman, twenty-eight, one hundred and sixty-seven centimeters tall, slim, American, with auburn hair and gray-blue eyes. He couldn't bring himself to call the hospitals. Or the morgues. Claire did that, while Rippner went back to the video feeds from the Underground. Burton's new contact, the man who might tell them about the treasures hidden in British Museum station, one Simon Dermott, wouldn't see them before noon. It wasn't civilized on a Sunday. "Some people still go to church, Mr. Rippner," Burton said. Rippner didn't reply. Claire watched him until he ate an omelet and a dry piece of toast. From feeding the photo Rippner had taken of the terrified young man on the Soho roof into the company's world-set of passport and police databases, she had expanded her search to include Rosemary Wheeler's potential recent doings. She had yet to conjure up anything on either front.

Finally, his vision blurring from staring at the video feeds, Rippner drank a glass of orange juice and tried to get some sleep. He lay back on the sofa. His eyes ticked nervously behind his closed lids. He could hear Burton, Becker, and Carter talking quietly in the next room.

From the edge of sleep, he felt Claire drape a blanket over his chest and legs. He heard her breathing as she leaned over him, felt the steady lightness of her touch as she tucked the edges around him. _Kind, motherly Claire._ He dozed off.

Then he dreamed.

*****

In his dream, he was back in the station beneath the bookstore, only now the platform was still in place, and Rippner stepped out of the access tunnel onto it. Awake, he'd been in British Museum station; now, he didn't know where he was. There was a roundel on the wall to his left, but he couldn't bring his eyes to focus on it, couldn't read what it said.

Behind him, a breeze whispered to life. He turned to face it: the air in motion was cold, and it smelled of metal shavings and dust.

And ahead of him on the platform, he saw Lisa, walking away. She was dressed as she'd been for the theatre, in jeans and a gray sweater; her leather bag hung by its strap from her shoulder. She was nearly to the platform's far end. Before her, the tunnel opened into blackness--

"Lisa--"

Rippner's voice made no sound. He walked after her, but the platform lengthened as he did. The faster he walked, the farther away she was. The macadam, the curved tiled wall, stretched away before him. Lisa reached the far end of the platform and climbed down onto the tracks and stepped into the tunnel--

Someone was waiting for her. Compact, slender frame, gray coveralls, short dark hair. He looked from the shadow inside the tunnel's mouth straight back at Rippner--

-- and then Rippner was in the tunnel looking back at himself running now along the platform. Running without drawing nearer. Lisa smiled at him, and he smiled back at her and took her hand, and together they turned and walked away on the tracks leading into darkness, the breeze building to a wind against their faces. Rippner heard a rumbling ahead, crescendoing to a roar. He saw a pinprick glow that grew larger and brighter as he watched. And then he and Lisa were going toward a great and encompassing light--

*****

On the sofa in the Carters' suite, Rippner started and sat up. Adrenaline sent shockwaves through his chest. Thoughts crowded his brain--

_British Museum station. The Central Line east of St. Paul's. Lisa wasn't on the surface. She was in the Underground. The bookstore off Holborn. British Museum station. Holborn station--_

"Stan?" he said.

Across the way, Burton's head jerked up. He'd fallen into a doze in front of one of the laptops. He blinked, looked Rippner's way. "Yes, Jackson?"

"Are there any other abandoned stations in the vicinity of Holborn?"

"There's Aldwych, to the south. Not quite abandoned, though. Film crews use it for--"

"Can it be reached via the tunnel out of Holborn?"

"Not ordinarily. Not from the main branch. The end of the line is walled off. There's a door through, but it's kept padlocked. Half rusted shut in the bargain. Why do you ask--?"

"I was dreaming. I thought I saw--"

On the coffee table, his phone buzzed. Rippner picked it up. "Yes?"

_Jackson--?_

Lisa's voice.

Rippner's spine jerked straight. "Lisa--?" He had to speak around his heart caught suddenly in his throat. He never imagined he could feel anything as intensely as the relief he felt at that moment. "Baby, are you okay? Where are you?"

_The hospital. St. Thomas's, I think-- Yeah_-- -- as a voice in the background, a male voice, provided sounds of confirmation.

_I'm okay, Jackson,_ she said. She sounded a little uncertain, slightly unfocused. But not in pain, and very much alive. _I'm alright. Can you come and get me--?_

*****


	6. Chapter 5

**A/N:** Welcome back. Warning time: In the last chapter, we had violence. This time, we have sex. And plot. Lots of plot. Adjust your blinkers accordingly, folks. And, as always, thanks for tagging along....

*****

Claire went with him to St. Thomas' hospital. The morning mist was still haunting the city in pale chorister patches, and as the taxi made the turn from Westminster Bridge onto Lambeth Palace Road, Rippner's initial relief made way for a prickling pair of realizations: one, he had a job to do; and, two, he'd been a fool.

Under the awning at the main doors, he paid the cab driver and told the man to wait. He pushed through the two sets of glass doors with Claire behind him and looked for guidance to the arrowed signs hanging from the ceiling. As her lab and examination fees would have to be settled before the hospital would release her, Lisa was to be waiting for them in the main discharge area, not in the public waiting area at the front of the building. Rippner spotted an arrow hinting of admissions and discharges and set off.

"We'll put her on the next plane home," he told Claire as they crossed to the left, across the open dun expanse of the waiting area. The floor-to-ceiling windows were still streaked with last night's rainwater. "She can't be here. What the hell was I thinking, Claire, getting involved with--"

"I'll assume you're using the royal 'we.'"

Rippner scowled. "What--?"

They were passing a Costa coffee shop on the hospital's ground floor. Claire took him firmly by the arm, steered him inside, and stopped.

"She can't see you like this," she said.

"Like what, Claire?" He shook his arm sharply. She kept her hold on him as casually as a vise. She was one of maybe three people in the world who could handle him this way. She waited until he relaxed before she spoke again, and even then she watched him with cautious, capable respect. She'd lived around predators like Rippner long enough to know the damage they could do.

"You're tired, Jackson. You're wound up; you've done some horrible things in the past few hours-- I don't need to know the details. And you've had a hell of a scare."

"All the more reason for her not to be here--"

Claire drew him to the side to make way for a trio of R.N.s in floral smocks entering the shop. "You're putting her on a plane home? You and whose army? Tell me, and I'll be there with popcorn and a camera. Because that, hands down, would be the most entertaining thing to happen so far on this bloody so-called vacation. The last time you tried to make her do something, she put you in the hospital for nearly a month, didn't she--?"

Rippner winced. "I just want her to be alright."

"Why don't we wait and see what _she_ wants?" Claire released his arm. "Is she to be your girlfriend when it's convenient for you, or when it's safe for her? She thinks you're going to walk in and take her in your arms and stammer something, you poor stoic man, about how happy you are she's okay." She reached up, gently smoothed the hair away from Rippner's left temple. "And guess what? That is _exactly_ what's going to happen."

Rippner paused. He watched another group of people enter the shop, a middle-aged man and woman, a teenage girl between them. He drew air more deeply into his lungs, felt some of the tension ease from his shoulders. "Understood." He met her eyes. "Thanks, Claire."

She smiled. "Any time."

*****

In a windowless bunker of a waiting area well back in St. Thomas's, Lisa sat, leaned forward on her elbows, on the edge of a green upholstered chair, watching the corridor leading in from the hospital's main entrance. She had washed her face and hands, but her clothes were very dirty. Her blood tests had come back negative for opiates, but she could still feel it in her system, the channeler of voices from the Tube, a twitching through her chest like the hooked tuggings of wires, a jumpiness behind her eyeballs. A nurse had left her here with a clipboard of paperwork and an admonishment to the two women staffing the reception desk: words to the effect of _She has friends coming. Keep an eye on her._ They were. Through the tumult of comings and goings, patients and their families checking in and out, she felt them watching her. She wanted a shower. She wanted to sleep away the thing in her head. She wanted Jackson.

He smiled for her as he walked in, the easy, boyish smile of two years back in a bar in a Dallas airport. Claire was with him. He crossed the room to Lisa, and she rose, and he wrapped her in his arms. She molded herself against him.

"Are you okay?" he whispered.

Lisa squeezed him more tightly. "Yeah. I think so."

She bore band-aids and a handful of bruises. She'd had a tetanus shot. The results of her test for Weil's disease had just come back negative: the rats had given her nothing to take away from Aldwych or the tunnel west of Holborn. She was sickness-free. Nothing remained now but the settling of debts. From the depths of a distressed leather rucksack, Claire produced Lisa's passport. Just the passport, Lisa noted: the wallet was missing. While the older woman paid fees, courtesy of her husband's company, and saw to the paperwork at the reception desk, Lisa looked into Jackson's too-blue eyes, tried to glean from his face his doings in the last few hours. He looked tired.

She touched his cheek tenderly. "You haven't shaved," she said.

He frowned, then, and looked away. He turned his head toward an imaginary point of interest along the baseboards across the room and dragged the heel of his right hand roughly across his eye socket.

He cleared his throat. "What happened last night, Lisa?"

He was trembling against her, ever so slightly. She could feel it. She kissed his stubbly cheek. Claire and the receptionist were still fussing over her paperwork. "At the theatre-- There was something in my bag." She kept her lips close to his ear, spoke very quietly. "It's still there, Jackson. I touched it--"

"Becker's nanites, angel. He slipped them to you yesterday, at Gordon's. He didn't trust Grant; he thought we were a team--"

"Aren't we?"

He looked at her again, and this time his smile reached his eyes.

*****

She felt fine, or only slightly disconnected from herself, walking between Claire and Jackson out through the hospital's main doors to the black boxy cab waiting under the awning of the drop-off area. Claire took one of the fold-down seats, leaving the three-seater bench for Lisa and Jackson. He stayed close to her; their clasped hands rested where their thighs were pressed together--

He explained to her as they drove, and as Claire kept an eye on the traffic receding past the window next to her tousled ash-blonde head, how Burton had helped them, how Becker had admitted concealing the nanites. He told her of the gruesome discovery on the tracks east of St. Paul's station: a body they'd initially believed to be Lisa's, which they now were fairly certain was that of Professor Becker's assistant, Kathy Hobart. He told her of the imaging equipment in the abandoned station below the bookstore in Bloomsbury Court, and how they-- Carter, Rippner, and Burton-- were to meet later with a man who might tell them of the treasures placed for safekeeping during the Second World War that might be hidden there still.

She saw, from the haunted look around his eyes, that he wasn't telling her everything. She could sense from him an aura of lingering violence. Not guilt over that violence, though, nor pride in it. She might ask him later to elaborate; then again, she might not. She felt that he would answer any questions she might ask: for now, that was enough.

She was fine, if shaken-- this she told herself; she felt no fear, not until they drew near the Aldwych, and Jackson said: "You can get cleaned up, get some rest--"

"No--"

The insistence in her tone surprised all three of them. Jackson and Claire looked at her with concern.

"Not here." She struggled to match words to her unease. "I don't want to be alone--" She looked at Jackson desperately. "I don't-- Where will you be?"

"At the Savoy--"

"We have plenty of room," Claire said. "Jackson, we have a spare bath." She smiled at Lisa, leaned across to squeeze her hand, still clasped with Jackson's. "Let's get you some clean clothes from your suite. You can shower and change back at the Savoy. Okay?"

*****

In the common room of the Carters' suite, Lisa sat very still while Professor Becker gently tipped her chin up and to the right.

"This will be a little bit chilly, my dear," he said. "I apologize."

From the corner of her eye, she saw Jackson watching intently, balefully, as Becker opened a flat jar and scooped onto the rounded blade of a knife like a jam knife a dollop of glass-clear gel. Lisa shivered as he spread a thin layer of the gel over her pulse point.

"And now we wait," he said. "If the nanites in your system are still alive, they'll surface. This is a treat for them. They should be very hungry by now."

"How alive _are_ they?" Lisa asked.

"I can program them to eat, or not. I can program them to reproduce themselves when I require more of them."

"When I touched them, they tried to program _me_," Lisa said.

"Simply following their basic function. They made you receptive to molding, if you will, as best they could. Nearly a pre-hypnotic state, I imagine. Since I had no specific commands for them-- there was nothing I wanted you to _be_, but they had no way of knowing that-- they left you open to suggestion."

"I wanted everything in every ad I passed." Lisa spoke slowly. The sensation she'd felt last night revived, crept like a worm along her spine. "I heard voices in the Tube stations. On the train. And then, in the tunnel, on the tracks outside Holborn, I saw him--"

"Who?" Jackson asked. "Grant--?"

"No--"

Had his expression been tinged with with skepticism, suspicion, or jealousy-- anything ugly-- she would not have gone on. But his eyes held nothing but concern. Lisa looked at him as she continued:

"I saw-- He was a track walker. His name was Jim. He got me out of the way of the train out of Holborn. He led me back to the tunnel to Aldwych station--"

"Good lord," Burton said softly.

Lisa kept her eyes on Jackson. "That's where Harry, the Aldwych keeper, found me."

"Where did this Jim disappear to?" he asked.

"He, umm--" Lisa bit her lip. She sensed in her next words the stigma of madness; now she looked away. "He was never there."

From the corner of her eye, she saw Jackson's brows gather in a frown. "Lisa--"

"You saw a ghost, didn't you, Miss Reisert?" Burton said.

"That's what Harry told me. Yes."

"Miss Reisert--" Professor Becker interjected. He again tipped her head back; now he gently scraped away the clear gel. He smiled slightly, held the blunt blade of the knife for all of them to see: embedded, now, in the clear gel were tiny, glittering flecks of blue.

"They're still alive," he said, with satisfaction and relief.

Jackson looked less pleased. His shock-blue eyes were on the professor, not on the nanites, and from him Lisa felt again an aura of violence like the pressure drop before a storm.

*****

"Have your nanites damaged Lisa's brain, Professor?"

Rippner was in the main room of the Carters' suite with Becker, Burton, and John, waiting for Simon Dermott to call. Claire was in the master bedroom, keeping a mindful ear toward the bathroom door while Lisa showered.

"I would hope not, Mr. Rippner." Becker was standing near the room's largest table, on which Lisa's bag stood open. With gloved hands, he was carefully repacking and resealing the jar of nanites he'd surreptitiously passed her at Gordon's. "They're out of her system now; she should recover--"

"'_Should_,'" Rippner echoed, coldly.

"The corpus callosum." Burton spoke from the sofa. Rippner and the others looked at him; he continued:

"A mere two thousand years ago, the human brain was a very different thing. The ancients, who had yet to have the hemispheres of their brains joined by the nerve membrane we know as the corpus calllosum, saw solutions to their problems in the form of waking dreams. How the Greek pantheon of gods came to be, for example: were I a farmer, Athena might come to me and give me the wisdom to know when to plant my crops. If I were a general, Ares might tell me how best to attack my enemy." He looked at Rippner. "The Underground is full of trapped sounds, trapped voices. Some even say it has its own voice, a subsound below the range of human hearing. Jim is part of that 'sound.' I haven't seen him, but I know people who have. Good, stable people who work for me. He 'showed' Lisa the entrance to the Aldwych tunnel when her brain was most desperate for help."

Becker nodded. "The nanites may have enabled her to access an area of consciousness to which the modern brain is not normally privy."

"Exactly," Burton said.

Rippner stared at them. "That sounds insane."

"Would you rather she had been hit by that train out of Holborn?" Burton countered mildly.

Claire emerged from the master bedroom. "Quite understandably, she's decided on a nap," she said. She touched Rippner's arm. "Go tuck her in."

*****

When he was alone with her, his anger and fear, his irritation and doubt, melted away. She was in clean blue jeans and a rust-red sweatshirt; she was curled on her side on the bed, facing away from the door. Rippner quietly lay down behind her, eased close. Her washed hair was still damp; he brushed it gently aside, leaned over her, pressed his lips to the soft warm skin of her cheek. Then he settled himself behind her, draped his arm across her waist.

"Do you want to go home?" he asked.

"I want to stay with you," she murmured, without hesitation, in reply.

He felt the need to persist. Her response pleased him, but he didn't know quite how to react to devotion, more especially devotion in the presence of danger.

"Say the word," he said softly, "and we'll leave. Carter can go fuck himself."

Lisa was relaxing against him. They might have been in their own bed back at the Aldwych, or safe in her bed in Miami. "You're trying to prevent something bad from happening here, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Then you should do your job."

Rippner frowned at the tears suddenly stinging his eyes. He pressed himself closer to her. "I'll be leaving for an hour or so. Claire will be here. Get some sleep, okay?"

"I will." She shivered then. "Leave the light on."

"Okay."

"Just for now. I'm alright, Jackson," she added.

"I know, sweetheart." He squeezed her; she pressed her hand over his, against her midriff. Rippner wondered at the ache in his chest. "I know."

In the suite's sitting room, a phone rang. Behind them, someone tapped at the one-quarter-open door; Carter's voice said: "That's Dermott, Jackson. He's meeting us at the British Museum."

"He can wait," Rippner said. Weariness and tender reluctance seemed to weight him to the bed. _Stay_, his body said. Only after he was certain Lisa was asleep did he carefully disengage from her and get up.

*****

Both Becker and Burton were tagging along to the British Museum. Having resealed his nanites, Becker was bringing them along, in a reinforced leather satchel like a camera case. He seemed loath to let the things out of his sight. Rippner couldn't blame him. They were taking Burton's car: he'd parked in the hotel's Adelphi garage using Carter's name and suite number. Before they left Claire and Lisa behind in the suite, Rippner turned to his boss, the manager of managers.

"You need to tell me who's getting screwed here, John," he said. "The whole European Union wasn't invited to the freeze-tech summit, were they? Who got left out?"

He reviewed the list of invitees as they drove. Among the most notable exceptions were the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, and Greece. The last stuck in his mind as they climbed the broad steps to the museum's entrance. The British Museum might claim to steward treasures from all the world's history, but the lion's share of its holdings, its proudest claim to glory, was its collection of items from ancient Greece.

_Including the Elgin Marbles,_ thought Rippner, glancing to the left, toward the hall in which the Elgins were displayed, as he and Carter and the others stepped through the heavy doors into the museum's soaring glass-ceilinged indoor courtyard.

*****

Simon Dermott's office was on the museum's ground floor, in the west wing. He was at his desk before a flatscreen iMac when Carter knocked at the open door; he rose to greet them not quite smiling. He was in his mid-sixties or thereabouts, tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and once very handsome, time and, Rippner suspected, wilder living than the man would care to admit having lent ruin to his face (suitable, perhaps, given his profession), but still slim and elegant now, in a black suit and a subtly embroidered gray vest that balanced calmly on the edge of flamboyance. His tie was a shimmering cascade of silken plum-purple checks. He shook Burton's hand and wasted only minimal introduction time with the others.

"What are you looking for, Stanley?" he asked.

"What are you missing, Mr. Dermott?" Rippner countered.

Dermott stiffened. "Subtle, Jackson," Carter muttered.

"An admission that, understandably, I am unwilling to make." Dermott focused his blue eyes coldly on Rippner as he spoke. "But the fact is, of course, that hundreds of things have gone missing over the course of the museum's history." He didn't keep the disdain from his voice. "I'll assume you're not looking for a handful of verdigris-encrusted Etruscan coins."

In an office off the main reading room, he showed them the catalogue of the British Museum's vanished items, a tall, leatherbound set of books. The earliest entries were made in fading ink longhand, just descriptions, an occasional sketch. Later, though, photographs of varying quality made their appearance, amid measurement markers that lent to the air of criminality. Like mugshots, Rippner thought. On the screen of the computer in his office, Dermott called up an actual database of the museum's lost pieces, not available to the general public. He and his visitors concentrated on the items that went missing after the World Wars, many of which had found sanctuary in the Underground during the German bombing of London. Vases, bits of statuary, jade and lapis pieces the size of paperweights. Examples of the afore-mentioned coins. Mostly things that would fit manageably in a pocket, or in a box or burlap sack.

"We at the museum assume," Dermott said, "that all of these items have long since been fenced, that they've fallen into the hands of private collectors."

"Lost and found and lost again," Rippner murmured, watching with the others as images scrolled down the screen. And then--

"Wait," he said.

Dermott paused the scroll of photos. It was extraordinary: carved in polished black marble, the statue of a young man in flight, a set of magnificent spread wings strapped to his back, his torso arched as if in ecstasy or pain or both.

"Jesus, that's incredible," Carter whispered.

"Not Jesus, Mr. Carter, nor any of Milton's archangels," said Dermott. "About twenty centuries too early for them. That's Daedalus's doomed boy, there."

Rippner looked at the identifying tag on the photo. "The Elgin _Icarus_."

Burton was incredulous: "They lost one of the _Elgins_, Simon--?"

Carter looked blank; Burton explained: "The museum sheltered nearly a hundred tons of Greek marble in the Underground during World War II. A hundred _tons_."

"The Elgins, John," Rippner added. "Legendary. Friezes and sculptures plundered-- no finer term for it-- from the Parthenon by British archaeologist Thomas Bruce early in the nineteenth century."

If Dermott's expression stopped short of admiration, he at least looked at Rippner with less contempt. "Very good, Mr. Rippner."

"How much would the _Icarus_ be worth?" Carter asked.

Dermott considered. "It's difficult to say, precisely--"

"Millions, right--? Two or three, at least."

"To the right buyer--"

"What if that buyer were Greek--?" Rippner asked.

"The opportunity to own an Elgin, Mr. Rippner--? To take back from Britain a piece of Greece's plundered heritage--? Priceless." Realization sparked in Dermott's pale eyes; he looked at Rippner with frank incredulity. "You're assuming it's still down there, aren't you? Down in the Underground, waiting to be found."

"What if someone concealed it in hopes of selling it and never had the chance to come back for it--?"

"Do you know who took it, Simon?" Burton asked.

Dermott hesitated. He glanced away from them, away from the image on the screen of the iMac. "There was a man who stood accused of stealing and fencing dozens of pieces from those stored in the Underground during the Second World War," he said. "Bit of a scandal: he was a junior curator here at the museum. His name was Andrew Fallon." His lips pursed, as though the words were sour. "And, coincidentally," he added, looking at Burton, "his journal was stolen from an exhibit at the Imperial War Museum three weeks ago."

"Is he still alive?" Carter asked.

"No. But his son is." Dermott spoke hesitantly, and with distaste. "He teaches archeology, of all things. Here in town, at University College London."

"We need to speak to him," Rippner said.

*****

Back at the Savoy, Lisa's stomach clamored her awake. She looked to the bedside alarm: she'd been asleep for just over an hour, and that sleep had been dreamless and sound, but now her body was reminding her that she hadn't eaten since yesterday afternoon at Gordon's.

She stretched, stood, padded in sock feet out into the sitting room. Claire was seated at the main table with a semi-circle of laptops before her. "Hey," she said, smiling over. "Trouble sleeping?"

Lisa smiled muzzily back. "Mm mm. I'm hungry."

Claire nodded toward the phone and the room-service menu. "I expect you to molest the company's expense account well and truly before this is over. Unless you're thinking of stepping out--?"

"No. Not right now." She was in a strange city, under decidedly strange circumstances, and she still felt shaky. She looked over the menu while Claire went back to her work.

"How did you meet?" she asked, after requesting of the hotel's kitchen a club sandwich and a salad and a bottle of water.

"John and I--?"

"Yes."

Claire smirked at the screen before her. "'Just a Scots girl with a knitting needle.' Famous last words."

"You're Scottish?"

"Once upon a time. I was also Royal Air Force stationed out of Prestwick, but the hapless bastard didn't find _that_ out until it was far too late. He proposed to me about a week after they re-inflated his lung."

Lisa smiled. Between Jackson's initial experience with her and what sounded to be a disastrous first encounter between Carter and Claire, she had to wonder if the company's men might yearn for an easier way of meeting women. "You hide your accent. Why?"

"I've lived in the United States for nearly twenty years, and what I've learned is that people tend to listen to the brogue, not to what you're saying. If they can understand you through the brogue at all, which frequently is doubtful. My older brother still gives me hell for 'talking American.' He and his family are situated on Scotland's west coast, near Mulvern." Something on the monitor to her left caught her eye. "Ah, and there's Paul Miller, up at last."

Lisa came closer, looked over Claire's shoulder at the messages scrolling down the right side of the monitor screen. _Who can I do you for, Claire?_

"That's 'For whom can I do you?', Miller, you tit," Claire keyed in reply.

_Ask, and I shall obey, oh goddess of grammar._

Claire smiled as she typed out her request: she and Carter and Rippner needed the last-known whereabouts of Rosemary Wheeler, her present associates, and hotel reservations that she or those associates might have made in the U.K. in the last month, in their names or under any known aliases.

_Well, there goes my Sunday,_ Miller typed. _I'll let you know what I find, pet._

"Many thanks, Paul," Claire tapped out. Then she pushed back from the table with a yawn. "I'm having a nap," she announced, aloud. "Don't worry: you won't keep me awake," she said to Lisa, as she stretched her lanky frame out on the sofa. "The bed is all yours."

She pulled a throw over herself and closed her eyes. Lisa stayed up. Her food arrived. As she ate, she watched the transmissions Miller began to send along. She froze with the bottle of water raised to her lips: in a surveillance photograph snapped less than a month ago on a midtown sidewalk in New York City, she saw with the petite, dark-haired woman identified as Rosemary Wheeler the panther-like tall man from the crypt in St. Paul's.

_Roland Mason,_ read the caption on the photo.

*****

Sunday saw the receptions area of University College London understaffed; nevertheless, with patience and transfers and after roughly twenty minutes of hold-time Vivaldi, Rippner and the others at the museum learned that Professor Richard Fallon was currently on-site in Cornwall at a Bronze Age settlement with a group of underclassmen. The college had a contact number; would Dr. Dermott be interested...?

"Can you put him on speakerphone?" Carter asked.

Dermott tapped a button on the black desk-set; six burring ring-tones later, the phone said:

_Fallon. Speak._

"This is Simon Dermott of the British Museum." Dermott looked coolly at the air above the phone as he spoke. "How are you, Fallon?"

_Up to my arse in mud and mussel shells, Simon. How're you?_

"We have you on speakerphone, Fallon. Do you mind?"

_'We'? Who else is there, Simon?_

"Stanley Burton of London Transport, three other gentlemen."

_Stan I know. Lose something down your train in the drain, have you, Stan?_

"Not me, Rich."

_You lot haven't gone and perforated another crypt, have you? Antiquities: you know the drill. You find a site, you file it with the city--_

"It's about your father's journal," Dermott said.

A long pause. _Have they found it? Those other three: are they the police--?_

"No, Richard--"

"We believe that someone is looking for something your father mentioned in his journal--" Rippner began.

_Ah, an_ American. _Speaking with typical American specificity._

Rippner bristled at the speaker. "-- something that he may have hidden in British Museum station."

_Well, then, they're looking in the wrong place, aren't they? _Another pause. From the speaker came the sound of wind gusting in distant Cornwall. _Would this be easier in person, Simon?_

Dermott managed to silence most of his exasperation. "Yes, Richard, it would."

_I'll be back in London tomorrow morning. Care to tell me where we're to meet--?_

"The Savoy, suite four-ten," said Carter.

_Another American. Thrilling. 'Til tomorrow, then, lads._

The call terminated. "That's that, then," said Dermott. "What now?"

Next to him, Professor Becker stifled a yawn. Rippner looked at Carter. The man had had nearly as little sleep as the rest of them, and he was older than Carter by at least fifteen years. After the drama of last night, he had to be exhausted.

"Perhaps, for the time being, we should find different lodgings for Professor Becker," Rippner said.

"I can contact one of our safe houses--" Carter began.

Dermott interrupted: "Do you play chess, Professor Becker?"

Becker blinked. "Certainly I play chess, Herr Dermott."

"Do you play well?"

Becker studied Dermott's face; he simply smiled.

Dermott said: "The professor is welcome to stay at my house. Three days until your summit, correct--?"

Becker nodded. "Correct."

"No one else knows we're here--" Carter said.

Burton added: "No one but me, Miss Reisert, and Claire."

Carter scoffed. "We _are_ spread pretty thin, John," Rippner said.

"One condition," Dermott added.

Carter turned to him. "What's that?"

"You are to minimize any and all contact between that hooligan Fallon and myself."

"Fine." Carter's tone, like his expression, was bemused but conciliatory. "As you wish."

Rippner asked Dermott: "Do you have a safe in here?"

They left the nanites behind in a wall safe whose combination was known, first, only to Dermott and then, by extension, to Rippner. Becker, armed with a panic-button beeper, went off with Dermott. Carter would send the professor's things along later.

*****

As Rippner, Carter, and Burton left via the museum's grand main entrance and Dermott and his chess-playing houseguest departed via the staff parking area off Montague Street for an address in Belgravia, a woman who looked nothing like Rosemary Wheeler rapped quietly on the door of Professor Becker's suite at the Savoy.

"Housekeeping," she called.

No response. In she went. Five seconds for the door lock, using a master key-card not unlike the one Jackson Rippner had used to access Robert Grant's room at the Radisson in Seven Dials, and another twenty seconds to open the room's safe using the code poor shattered Miss Hobart had programmed into the lock. With the naivete typical of his nerdish species, the good professor hadn't thought to change the combination.

Less than thirty seconds, then, to disappointment. The safe was empty. The nanites were gone.

"Shit," muttered Rosemary, from behind her less-than-skin-thick latex disguise.

*****

_You didn't honestly think they'd be there, did you?_ Roland said, voicing Rosemary's thoughts from the earpiece of her phone, as she stepped, still in disguise, out onto the Strand.

His prescience, however well it matched hers, didn't prevent her from mouthing a _Fuck you_. "Well, now we know they're not. What are you doing?"

_Errands. I'll be back at the hotel in an hour or so._

*****

As Rosemary Wheeler strolled away, incognito, from the Savoy, Lisa and Claire, up from her nap, were sharing their info-feed finds with Jackson, Carter, and Burton. Paul Miller and his people were still trying to locate hotel reservations under any of Roland Mason's or Rosemary Wheeler's known aliases, but Jackson, looking at the photo from New York, said, "We should have a look at what's in the vault under St. Paul's."

"In broad daylight?" Carter asked.

"I'm thinking they do most of their work at night," Rippner replied. "This way, we don't have to break in, and we'll run less of a chance of being noticed. Blend in with the tourists."

"It would look more official if you were properly dressed," Burton said.

Carter looked his way. "You're going with us?"

"I am. That _is_ TFL property there, under the crypt. Or it was."

Lisa spoke: "I'm going, too." Jackson opened his mouth to protest; she continued: "There was a man in the crypt besides Mason and Morgan. Remember, Jackson? Younger, sandy hair, kind of pudgy. I've seen him; John and Stan haven't. I can keep an eye out for him."

Claire added, when Jackson hesitated: "Remember: he may have seen you, too."

"Does Mason know you, Jackson?" Lisa asked.

"If he's working with Rosemary Wheeler, she may have mentioned me." His voice was steady, casual even, but Lisa saw his cheeks color for a moment when he spoke.

*****

En route to St. Paul's Cathedral, Burton, driving a maroon Sterling sedan whose immaculate wax job and interior cleanliness belied years of hard wear, made a wide detour to the main offices of Transport for London for a jacket for Jackson and hardhats with lamps for both of them. "People step aside when they see helmets coming through," he said, escorting them to a basement room hung with uniforms, shelved with equipment. "They think the roof's coming down. You might be needing the light as well," he added, as Jackson took the hardhat Burton offered him.

As long as they were there, Burton walked them to his office and checked TFL's system to see who might have signed the paperwork for the rental of the jewel vault beneath St. Paul's. The renter was one Amy Kendrick, whose name Carter phoned back to Claire. But the name of the person initiating the rental was not on the employment lists of Transport for London; "William Donne" had a dummy employee number as well.

*****

On a sidestreet a block from the cathedral, Burton hung a Transport for London permit on his rearview mirror. "With my luck, the bastards will clamp me anyway," he said. "It won't be the first time."

Carter and Lisa went first, looking the part of tourists as they ascended the steps to the cathedral's main entrance. Carter wore a Black Hawks bill cap and an inconspicuous earpiece and transmitter. "Can you hear me, Jackson?" he said, as he and Lisa entered the cathedral; he nodded to Lisa as Jackson replied. They made their way down to the crypt. Lisa picked a floor-plan brochure from a wall rack, and she and Carter were intently pretending to contemplate the tomb of Florence Nightingale when Burton and Jackson walked past in their hardhats, accompanied by a young cleric with a set of keys.

"Safety inspection," Burton was saying to the young man. "We need to check the power cabling they're using down there." As Lisa watched out of the corner of her eye, Jackson and the cleric disappeared into the alcove where they had first seen Mason, Bill Morgan, and the pudgy young mystery man. The cleric emerged from the alcove; Jackson did not; the cleric spoke briefly to Burton and walked away. Burton stayed where he was, looking casually officious, just outside the alcove.

Carter and Lisa drifted from the tombs toward the souvenir shop. She made a show of examining a display case of religious jewelry while Carter looked at prints.

And her heart jolted against the base of her throat as Roland Mason came lithely down the stairs of the crypt.

She glanced Carter's way. "Jackson, get out of there," he said, tightly and very quietly, to a watercolor of the cathedral on a rainy day.

Mason, checking his watch, was crossing the crypt toward the alcove. He was moving casually, ostensibly without suspicion. Burton spotted him and moved away from his spot at the wall near the alcove's entrance. Carter looked at Lisa and shook his head. He moved closer and murmured: "He's not up yet."

"I'll see if I have any change, honey," Lisa replied loudly. Peering into her bag, she turned away from Carter and walked at speed right into the spinner of postcards Jackson had been looking at the day before last.

It toppled and hit the floor with a brittle and explosive crash. Postcards skittered across the flagstones. The shop clerks started; heads turned. Including Mason's.

"Darn it-- _darn_--" Lisa nearly tripped into the wreckage. "I'm so sorry--"

She scrambled to help the clerks right the spinner and gather postcards. In the moment before Mason turned his attention away from the commotion, Jackson slipped out of the alcove and into the cathedral's crypt-level cafeteria. Burton quietly followed him.

*****

He hadn't had time enough for a truly thorough look at the contents of the vault, but Rippner had been able to snap a handful of pictures. Once again, he handed his phone to Claire; he spoke as she downloaded:

"At a guess, I'd say they're trying to perfect a way of shielding the nanites from Becker's kill-signal, John."

"All the better to make a clean getaway. When and if they score the nanites in addition to the half of the compound they've stolen already." Carter frowned thoughtfully. "We know who they are, and we know where they've set up shop. We don't know where they're staying, but Paul is working on that." He looked to Rippner. "What now, Jackson?"

Rippner shrugged. "Tomorrow morning we talk to Dr. Fallon."

"Why not nab the blackguards now?" Burton asked.

"Because we're not the police, Stan," Rippner said. "We don't know the specifics of their operation; we don't know how many more of them there might be. Besides, in the long run, sending a message will be far more important. We're going to discredit them in the eyes of a buyer or buyers who won't take kindly to being duped."

Lisa sat forward on the sofa. "How?"

Rippner smiled for her, slightly, mysteriously. "I'm working on it."

"Right, then." Claire was sitting on the sofa; she stood. "We have the nanites, and Professor Becker is tucked away safely. Or so we think," she added, drolly. She went to the closet, got her coat, and turned to Carter. "Come on. If nothing else, my darling, tonight you are taking me for a proper bloody drink."

*****

They would meet again at the Carters' suite tomorrow at nine-thirty in the morning; for now they split up. Burton, off to stop in again at the office before going for a pint, said his goodnights. Jackson called to check on Becker and Dermott: all quiet there, save for one sharp admonishment from the keeper of antiquities--

"'We are playing _chess_, Mr. Rippner,'" he said, as he put away his phone, and Lisa laughed at the snooty mimicry in his voice.

They ate dinner at a North African restaurant in Short's Garden, downstairs, seated by lamplight on the comfortably worn cushions of a low sofa. Saffron rice, mildly but exotically spiced lamb and chicken. Mint tea that they drank, hot, from delicate glasses set in brass holders. Then they strolled around the piazza of Covent Garden, the Royal Opera House and the glass-roofed length of the market glowing eggshell white beneath a midnight-blue sky. The weather was clear and cool; Lisa was glad of the weight she'd chosen in a jacket. Jazz echoed on the cobblestones, saxophone, string bass, live, from the cafe at the end of the market. Beside her, Jackson seemed relaxed and comfortable. As a northerner, he was less prone, she knew, to feel the chill, just as she, the native Floridian, was less apt than he was to wilt in heat.

They were passing the London Transport Museum. She found herself thinking of burly Harry down in the Aldwych station and his pride, that antique train from 1938. Jackson put his arm around her shoulders.

"Warm enough?"

"Yes, I'm fine." She reached back and caught the fingers of his right hand. "Will you be working any more tonight?"

"No." Jackson stopped walking. A pause while he chose his words. He turned and looked at her. "I think there's only one thing I could concentrate on right now."

The fingers of his right hand knitted themselves with hers; he gently drew her closer, his eyes clear and frank, oddly innocent. Lisa leaned up and kissed the corner of his mouth.

Both of them trembled, but not from cold.

*****

They said their "Good evening"s and "Goodnight"s to Peter the receptionist, once again on duty at the front desk of the Aldwych. They crossed the open airy whiteness of the lobby, and in the shelter of the elevator, as the doors slid shut, Jackson pressed Lisa back against the wall of the car. He bent slightly, reaching around to slide his hands up Lisa's legs, parting her thighs. He pushed up against her as he straightened again, and Lisa wrapped her legs around his waist. He was definitely, absolutely aroused.

"There's a camera up there," she whispered, nodding toward the ceiling in the right-hand corner of the car.

Jackson smiled devilishly as he nuzzled her throat, rubbed himself against her. "Mm hm."

He was very hard, and he was as much as slowly thrusting; Lisa relaxed into his touch and motion with an audible sigh of pleasure. She took his face in her hands and had a long, indulgent look at the decadent fullness of his lips, and Jackson groaned softly as she opened her mouth into his.

*****

In their suite, things slowed, became quieter, gentler, less frenetic. Lisa felt as though she were entering a time capsule of yesterday. Jackson hung her jacket and his while Lisa sat down to take off her boots. She rose again when he offered her his hand and led her into the bedroom.

Not trouble with the words. Maybe not exactly. More, perhaps, with foreign feelings, expressions. She stood with him beside the bed.

He looked at her a little helplessly. "I thought I'd lost you," he said, finally. "Last night-- I thought you were gone."

*****

They undressed one another. No tugging, no fumbling, no desperation. A slow progression of touch, of increasing, and then absolute, nakedness, the two of them working methodically and tenderly there beside the bed. Nude, they embraced. Jackson wrapped her in his arms, nuzzled her neck; Lisa held him in return, the warm, lean hardness of him, and let her belly rub gently against the frank eager thrust of his erection.

She lay back on the bed, and he followed her. She was ready for him; she wanted him; she grasped him and guided him to her slick opening, and Jackson pushed into her. He looked between them, watched their joining; he raised his eyes to Lisa's and smiled. She met his eyes. She felt as though they were balancing a breath between them. She relaxed beneath him, opening herself more thoroughly to him. She wanted him as deep inside her as he could be.

He moved to position himself on straight arms above her, but she wrapped her arms around his upper back and drew him down.

"Come here," she murmured. "Let me feel your weight."

"Okay." He pressed his lips to her jawline, just below her left ear. "Anything, angel. Anything you say."

Really, it seemed to be what he wanted, too: simply to be as close to her as possible, in any possible way. He wasn't heavy; the mattress was very good. He nestled his face against her neck, and the motion of his hips, once he settled himself completely with and within her, was less a thrusting than a slow, sweet undulation: deep push, hold, relax, repeat. Lisa closed her eyes and held him. She moved with his rhythm, felt his loins and belly and chest shift against hers, the give and motion in his muscles. She pressed her face to the skin of his shoulder and let his scent fill her nostrils, the light muskiness of him, his pheromones and maleness, and something else, too, exotic and smoked-spicy, a hint as of sandalwood.

Her climax took her by surprise. The suddenness of it, the intensity. She heard herself moan, deep in her throat; she heard herself whimper, a sound that was nearly a sob--

"Lisa--?"

Only when she opened her eyes did she realize she was crying. Jackson was looking down at her, panting, his expression stricken.

"Am I hurting you?" he asked.

"No." She smiled through her tears; she caressed his cheek. She gasped as aftershocks of pleasure shook through her body. "God, no. You feel wonderful."

Jackson smiled back at her. Relief glowed from his ethereal eyes. He kissed her parted lips; he brushed tears tenderly from her cheeks and went back to work.

*****

She kept him where he was even after he came, groaning helplessly, wordlessly, against her neck as he did. He seemed content to remain. He might ease away and move to his own pillow and side of the bed later; for now, he dozed off still in her arms, and still inside her. A trove of contact between them, a deep, warm cache of security and trust. Lisa held him close as she followed him off to sleep.

*****

At eleven-thirty, the bedside phone rang. They had shifted onto their sides, though they were still deeply and thoroughly entangled. Jackson reached for the receiver.

"Rippner," he said. The lamp on his side of the bed was still on; Lisa saw surprise displace the sleepiness from his eyes. He offered her the receiver. "It's for you."

Puzzled, Lisa took the phone. "Hello?"

_Lisa? I've been trying to reach you. Are you alright?_

Her father. Joe Reisert, trying not to sound frantic. Lisa kicked herself internally: she'd forgotten to call him when she and Jackson arrived in London; more than that, she'd forgotten that she'd mislaid her phone last night in the access tunnels in Holborn station.

"Yes, Dad, I'm fine. I lost my phone; I'm sorry I didn't call."

_You lost your phone--?_

"Yeah. It was dumb: I had it in my jacket pocket, not my bag, and I dropped it in the Tube."

_You're keeping your passport and money safe, I hope._

"Yes, Dad. Absolutely."

Jackson kissed her temple, then eased away, gave her some space. She followed him with her eyes, appreciatively, as he got up and went to check his own messages.

_How's London, sweetie?_

"Interesting."

_Interesting--?_ Joe Reisert prompted.

"Interesting."

Now he spoke with open, cautious concern: _Is he treating you well, Lisa?_

"Very well, Dad."

She could hear him struggling not to pry, not to sound overly protective. _I woke you up, didn't I?_

"We had a long day; it's alright."

Jackson, having re-abandoned his phone, passed by the bed en route to the bathroom. Lisa heard an unsnapping, a rustling, the sound of running water.

_I'll let you get back to sleep. I love you, Lisa._

"I love you too, Dad."

_Enjoy your vacation, honey. Sweet dreams._

A distant click as he hung up. She was just tired enough to feel a pang of homesickness at his last words. Lisa leaned across Jackson's pillow to return the handset to the base. Then she lay back and wondered, weariness warring with curiosity, what Jackson was doing in the bathroom.

He emerged a minute later rubbing his freshly shaved jaw. "I thought you could do without the sandpapering," he said, as he came back to bed.

Lisa smiled for him. He lay back; she nestled herself against him, laid her head on his chest.

"How's your dad?"

She assumed from his tone that he'd had no drastic missives from Carter. "More worried than he's letting on."

"That's because he loves you. Which reminds me--"

She could hear his heartbeat, slow and steady and strong. "Yes, Jackson--?"

"Would you mind very much if I loved you, too?"

She smiled sleepily at the wonder that filled her. "Not very much, no. Not if I can love you back."

"That sounds fair." He reached back and switched off his bedside lamp, and in the dark he cradled her, held her close. "Goodnight, angel."

"Goodnight, Jackson."

*****

At the Mandarin Oriental, in the company of a somber Roland Mason and Rosemary Wheeler, Seth Patterson, at least, was feeling pleased: at five o' clock that afternoon, he'd performed the sixth of six consecutive successful tests on a pulse-proof case for Wenzel Becker's nanites. That they had yet to locate those nanites, as well as the Elgin _Icarus_, irritated Roland and Rosemary: that much was plain to Seth, who was celebrating the successful completion of his primary portion of the venture with pizza and one or two or four too many beers. That a cleric at the cathedral had allowed an inspector from Transport for London to check the wiring in the vault seemed to bother Roland even more, even though he had to know that Seth's equipment would have meant nothing to the man.

That the inspector had managed to slip away without Roland getting a look at him, and without re-locking the door leading down to the vault: now, _that_ was cause for concern.

"It was as though he turned invisible," Roland said. "One man stayed above; one man went below--"

"That could be standard procedure," Seth pointed out. "One guy stays up top in case something caves in."

"Or it could have been Rippner." Rosemary opened herself a bottle of Bass ale. "Between that and what happened to Bill: he treads very lightly, Jackson does."

"That guy from the bookstore?" Seth was suddenly far less beer-brave. "He knows about the vault? Does he know about _us_--?"

Rosemary took a long draught off her bottle, _tsk_ed at Seth's wide eyes. "Do try to keep up, Seth."

Seth looked to Roland. "Becker has moved the nanites," he stammered. "Maybe we should move the Play Doh--"

Roland kept his eyes thoughtfully on Rosemary. She kept her eyes on him. "No," she said. "We're better off leaving it right where it is. Right here with us."

Roland smiled. "Bait, Rose--?"

She gave him a cool, blue-eyed wink and tipped the neck of her beer bottle his way. "Exactly."

_Oh, shit._ Glancing toward the room's safe, wherein dwelt the Play Doh, Seth thought he knew how it felt to be the goat tethered to a stake during a tiger hunt.

*****

"Led Zeppelin," said Ken Warwick, looking at the picture taped to the monitor of Amy Kendrick's laptop. "It's been driving me insane, trying to think what that reminds me of." He tapped the image lightly with a fingernail. "Zeppelin's label: Swan Song." It was just after one a.m., and they were in British Museum station, commencing the night's search for a statue whose existence Amy was beginning to doubt. Out of frustration she'd stuck to her screen a printout of a file photo of the Elgin _Icarus_, the picture Ken was studying now; she'd added to it the caption _Have you seen me?_

"CD or vinyl?" she asked, without looking up from the scanning scope.

"Vinyl, of course."

She smiled. "You know what surprises me...?"

"What?"

He'd proved handy, Warwick had, since Morgan had died. And not just in terms of the efficiency with which he'd disposed of Bill's body, no. Here in the dusty dark, he moved the scanner probes where Amy told him. He kept an eye out for vagrants and Tube workers. And he seemed steady. Dependable. He was good company.

"That you haven't asked for more money."

"I'm content with my contracted price." He was looking at her through the night-goggles he wore when he kept watch where the station's platform had been. "I'm assuming that if I don't get greedy, I stand at least a chance of emerging from this alive."

"You're very honest."

"I tend to think of myself as 'realistic,' actually."

"Morgan won't be needing his cut. I don't know; I'd say you've earned it."

Warwick smiled, looking pleased despite himself. "We'll see."

*****

Rested and showered and-- Lisa found herself thinking the words shyly, almost parenthetically--

-- (that is to say, _in love: he loves me; I love him_)--

-- she and Jackson were back at the Carters' suite at nine twenty-eight in the morning. Burton was there already. And it appeared as though Claire's standing offer of room service had fallen on yet another pair of receptive ears. At the room's largest table, Richard Fallon sat with a feast before him: bangers as well as bacon, potatoes, tomatoes, baked beans. Black coffee and possibly a pint of orange juice. When Lisa and Jackson entered, he was excavating runny yolk from one of four fried eggs with a triangular spade of toast. He might have been forty-five; he might have been sixty-five. Fair hair, straight and in need of a cut, a weathered, hawkish face above broad shoulders.

"I'll have a bit of that, too, if it's on the menu," he said, looking at Lisa with wry blue eyes. He winked at Claire. "No offense, darlin'."

Carter looked about ready to kill him. He shrugged helplessly as Jackson shot him a glare. Smiling sweetly, Claire topped off Fallon's coffee cup before pouring a cup for herself. "None taken, Professor Fallon."

"Though I take it the answer's 'no,' given the look of offense on yon wee man's face." Fallon bit off a mouthful of toast and turned his sharp eyes to Jackson. "Who doesn't look nearly stupid enough to be a policeman." A nod Carter's way. "Him, on the other hand--"

For a second, Carter looked blank. Then his brows dropped to a thunderous scowl. "Now hold on--"

"Dermott told you, Rich: they're not the police." Burton came over, placing himself between Carter and Fallon as he did. "Lisa Reisert, Jackson Rippner: Professor Richard Fallon."

"Pleased to meet you, Professor Fallon," Lisa said.

"It's 'Richard,' darlin'."

"Dick," Jackson muttered.

"Nope: 'Richard,' if you please, Jack my boy," said Fallon, scooping beans onto a fresh slice of toast. "Now, if you'd care to tell me which of my father's borrowings you believe lies buried still in Stan's tunnels--"

"The _Icarus_," Jackson said. "The Elgin _Icarus_."

Fallon paused with beans dripping back onto his plate.

"Ah," he said, smiling. "_Now_ I'm interested."

*****


	7. Chapter 6

**A/N:** Sorry for the delay. This one's kinda big and chewy. Take your time; help yourself to the Keurig; enjoy. Thanks for the hits. And if you've got something to say-- heck, please speak up! Feedback is groovy.

*****

"So, then, who's going to take a shot at clueing me in? I doubt it'll be you." Pushing aside his breakfast plates, Richard Fallon smirked up at Carter; Lisa saw John's face go hollow as he bit the insides of his cheeks. "I've heard the _Icarus_ mentioned." Fallon turned his attention to Burton. "What exactly am I here for, Stan?"

Jackson spoke: "Very simply, can you help us find it?"

Asked Fallon: "Is your name 'Stan' now, lad?"

Almost unconsciously, Lisa gripped Jackson's arm; he was shaking with anger. Fallon watched him calmly.

"Fancy yourself the hard man, do you, Mr. Rippner?" he said. "You little fellas, always having something to prove. Look, lad, on the football pitch, I regularly break in half men twice your size and three times as fast."

Jackson smiled tightly. "Oh, really--?"

"Jackson." Lisa turned him to face her; she spoke firmly, very quietly. "No. Please."

His eyes locked on her with all the icy fury he'd focused on Fallon. Only for a second, though. He let his brow smooth without looking away; Lisa smiled for him a bit of smile, just between the two of them. Jackson said: "My apologies for the interruption, Professor Fallon."

"Accepted, you wee psychopath. So: Stan...?"

"Jackson about covered it, Rich. Someone is looking for the Elgin _Icarus_; we need to find it before they do. Can you help us?"

Fallon pushed back his chair, stood, and hauled onto the table a battered, multi-pocketed canvas-and-leather field bag. From its insides he produced a black plastic folder, a neatly clipped sheaf of printouts. "The keepers of the city's shrine to Mars may have lost the original, but I took the liberty, years back, of scanning Dad's journal complete. A few pages I think might be relevant to our needs." He whisked crumbs from the tabletop and spread out the white sheets. "This passage, here, supposedly from a letter he was drafting to the girl who was to be my mum--"

Lisa and the others leaned in as he pointed with a rough fingertip; Fallon read aloud the words in cramped, faded cursive:

"'Had I chosen not to stray, near the museum stationed I would stay. Awful, that. I'm sorry; you know I'm no poet. But understand: we've come to the ends of our line. Let us cherish, my darling, the space between us.' Notice anything?"

"How could they be at the end of the line if they're not married yet?" Carter asked.

"'Ends,' John," Claire pointed out. "Looks like they each get one."

"He misspelled 'understand,'" Jackson said.

Lisa looked more closely. "There's an 'r' in it. It says 'underst_r_and.'"

Fallon focused on Burton. "'Understrand.' Under. Strand. _Under Strand,_ Stanley."

"The original name for Aldwych station." Burton looked around at the others. "Strand station was renamed 'Aldwych' in 1915."

"There is no end of the line at British Museum station," Jackson said. "Plural or singular--"

"But there is at Aldwych." Lisa felt a growing thrill. She looked at Jackson, at the others, saw excitement and realization blossoming on their faces. "I was there--"

Fallon nodded. "Two ends of the line: the southern platform at Aldwych. Dollars to doughnuts-- that is the phrase, isn't it?-- if we measured the distance between the end of the line at Aldwych and the end of the line coming out of Charing Cross, we'd find ourselves a discrepancy. A gap between the two. A space between those terminating walls wide enough to hold the _Icarus_ and God knows what else."

Possibly because Fallon had already designated him the village's idiot, Carter stated, quite without qualm: "I don't understand how there can be two ends of the line that close together."

"Technically, there shouldn't be," Burton said. "Most people don't know that the Northern Line track between Charing Cross and Aldwych is complete; it's simply not used. Brief period of shuttle service during the war: that's about it. Someone--"

"Someone _very_ enterprising--" Claire added.

"-- your father, perhaps, Rich," Burton continued, "might have-- _might_, mind you-- have gone down there during the Blitz and built that second wall."

Jackson spoke: "Thousands of people sheltering in the stations, debris being cleared away constantly because of the bombing, not to mention the relics and art being stored down there legitimately--"

"Aldwych _was_ the official sheltering-place of the Elgins, remember--?" Burton interjected.

"-- who would have noticed, in all the chaos, an extra handful of workmen coming through with bricks and mortar and crates--?"

Jackson looked to Fallon with nothing but interest in his expression, excitement, not anger, sparking in his clear eyes. Fallon smiled at him, warmly, professorially, without a trace of goading. "Do we need a permit to have a look behind that wall in Aldwych, Stan?"

"I think this falls under 'necessary inspection and maintenance.'"

"Where will we find diggers?" Carter asked.

"We can't use London Transport workers, can we?" Lisa, a fellow manager, a like denizen of the corporate world, looked to Burton. "It would look too suspicious. A requisition might take days if you had to put it through the proper channels, wouldn't it? And we know that someone from your office is involved with Mason and his gang."

"I know just the people," Fallon said. "Hard-working, quick, discreet, polite, and utterly in my thrall. Utterly."

He looked about at all the eyebrows raised his way; he savored his pause with a wine-taster's relish; he added:

"Their grades are at stake, y' see."

*****

Fallon set out to round up able bodies, eager for extra credit and/or a decidedly unique impromptu field experience, from the Society of Archaeological Students at University College London. The rest of them split for business of their own, to set the dig in motion. Carter had meetings to coordinate between Professor Becker and the organizers of the freeze-tech summit. Burton drove off to the offices of Transport for London to check his messages and to clear his schedule for the rest of the day, before dropping in on the keepers at Aldwych station, Lisa's savior Harry McKay and his cohort, bristly pass-maker Martin Connolly, to announce, as a senior field manager of TFL, the conducting of "necessary inspection and maintenance" that afternoon at the wall marking the terminus of the south tunnel. Which left Lisa, Jackson, and Claire, who announced, once her husband departed:

"We're off to Oxford Street, you two. Shopping and lunch."

"Shopping--?" Jackson's brushy brows lowered in bemusement. "Claire, this is no time for--"

Claire ignored him. "I don't know how Jackson pitched your trip to you," she said to Lisa, "but the love of _my_ life said we'd be in London primarily for glamor and leisure. Consequently, I left my spelunking kit at home."

Jackson persisted: "You two can shop all you want when--"

"And what did _you_ pack for digging about in the muck, Dapper Dan--?" Claire shot back at him. "We stop at Marks, we buy ourselves outfits we won't mind destroying, and then we head off to what promises to be a long, dirty night in an abandoned Tube station with a decent meal in our bellies. Does that sound fair to you, Mr. Rippner?"

Looking a little more cowed, maybe, than a man with "Ripper" as a nickname ought, Jackson gnawed his upper lip. "Yes."

-- _Mom_, Lisa added, silently, smiling.

*****

The day was overcast, breezy but balmy. The rain if it fell would be big, splattering drops bearing no hint of ice. Claire and Jackson and Lisa took the Tube. Embankment station to Oxford Circus. Lisa slotted and re-caught her Travelcard; she walked after Claire, with Jackson behind her, to the escalators leading down to the station's lower concourse and the Bakerloo Line.

And there at the top of the silver downsliding steps, she stopped. Froze. Jackson gently drew her out of the stream of people funneling onto the escalator; "Claire," he called, his voice quiet but clear.

Stepping back from the escalator with an economy of motion that belied her lanky height, Claire rejoined them. She looked at Lisa with concern, then with realization. "My God, I completely forgot-- Lisa, I'm so sorry--"

"I'm fine. I'm fine--" Lisa smiled for her, for Jackson. She could feel her jaw shaking, her pulse thrumming like piano strings in her throat.

"We can take a taxi," Jackson said.

"No." Lisa shook her head. She breathed in slowly, let her eyes drift down the walls of the escalator stairwell. "I won't be much use in Aldwych if I can't go underground, will I--? I just need to listen--"

Far below: a rumbling, a squealing. A train arriving. Human tumult, human voices, alive. The station announcements: Oyster cards and the minding of the gap. A twining of guitar through the mix, electric, amplified: a busker playing a Radiohead song.

But no voices in her head. No whispering of _I want I want I want._ No drawing, no tugging, no bone-deep belief that _I **belong** down there_.

"I'm okay," Lisa said.

Her expression bore no fear, presented no brave-faced lie. Jackson accepted her words; he looked frankly relieved. "Okay."

Again, Claire went first, and Lisa followed. She kept to the right, as she was supposed to, and Jackson rode the steel step behind hers. He rested his left hand on her shoulder, though, as they descended, and Lisa leaned into the reassurance of his touch.

*****

Oxford Street. Marks and Spencer, the J.C. Penney's and Macy's, combined, of the United Kingdom. Their first time shopping together. And Jackson, for all his griping, proving to be a far fussier consumer than either Lisa or Claire. Lisa joined him at the triptych mirrors outside a bank of men's dressing rooms while Claire, her selections draped over her arm, casually patrolled the spinner racks near the main aisle. She was, Lisa realized, doing just that: patrolling. They were out in the public; Mason and his people might be out in the public, too. She was also giving them space, chaperoning them. A quaint idea, a smile-worthy one. Jackson, price tags hanging out the back of his collar, was tugging at the hem of a cobalt-blue pullover from the sportswear clearance rack.

"This or the gray one-- or both--?"

"Both." Lisa drew his hands down, away from the beleaguered waistband, and leaned up to kiss him. "This one brings out the red in your hair."

"My hair isn't red."

"Mm hm." She feathered his bangs with her fingertips. "The blue brings out your freckles, too."

"You're teasing me."

"Yes, I am." She kissed him again, the contact light but lingering. Her eyes half-closed. His, too. Her lips brushed his half-smile as she said, "I love you."

She tried the words on for size, there on the first floor of a department store, near the clearance racks of men's clothing. The squeak and clatter of hangers, the smell of plastic and industrial floor- and carpet-cleaners. Three mirrors reflecting three Lisas, three Jacksons, three gentle kisses.

The Jackson at the center of the reflections, the real Jackson, the Jackson of pale freckles and warm skin and too-blue eyes, looked back at her and replied, his forehead tipped to hers, the fingers of her other hand still entwined with his: "I love you, too."

*****

They made their purchases; they walked with their shopping bags to the boisterous early afternoon chaos of the Wagamama on Wigmore Street, where they sat on benches at a long maple-topped table and swiped tastes off each other's plates, all three of them, openly or stealthily. Ramen and tofu, chicken and _kare_, prawns, _teppan_, and _gyoza_. Cold glasses of water and elderflower tea. Lisa, watching Claire raise a chopstick as if to stab Jackson's hand when he took the final dumpling, and seeing the boyishness in his grin as he popped said dumpling into his mouth, thought how the company wasn't just his job, it was his family as well. The woman who'd borne him, who'd gone cold and distant after Jackson's father was murdered, might be in New York working as an architect; Jackson Rippner's real mother was in London, right here, right now, at this very table, drinking down the last of her cool fragrant tea with affectionate nonchalance while the man who might have been her son savored his last, stolen bite of lunch.

*****

Wearing their new, disposable clothes, Lisa and Jackson and Claire were the first ones to arrive at Aldwych station, around three o'clock. Harry McKay was waiting for them, watching, with the interest of a man who spent far too much time underground, the traffic passing on Surrey Street. He smiled broadly when he saw Lisa; he unlocked and pulled aside for her and the others a rattling black door-sized section of accordion gating. In place of the blue jacket and striped tie he'd worn during their first meeting, he was dressed in gray coveralls. Reflector strips in metallic white banded his upper arms, traversed his broad back; _Transport for London_ was stitched in black over the left side of his chest.

"Martin will look after you down below," he said, pointing the way to the spiraling stairs leading to the main platform and the stationkeepers' office. "I'll watch for the others. It's good to see you again, Miss Reisert," he added.

"It's 'Lisa,' Harry." Lisa smiled back at him as she led Jackson and Claire to the stairs.

One hundred and nineteen curving steps below street level, Martin, dressed, like Harry, in gray coveralls, had the electric kettle on burbling standby. He'd found more mugs as well, all chipped, most of them bearing graphics boasting their origins with Transport for London. He grinned when he saw Lisa; he smiled for Claire as awkwardly shy as a little boy meeting his new school principal; and he managed not to glare at Jackson, who, reciprocally recognizing a potential rival, if only an extremely distant one, for Lisa's affections, managed not to glare back.

"Harry says we're like the Seven Dwarfs," Martin said, offering them the first of the tea as they gathered near the ancient wooden doorframe of the keepers' office. "Says I'm Grumpy. Which is fine, I say," he said, as he carefully handed Lisa a mug, "as it makes him the other six, the fat bastard."

Lisa took the mug, thinking. "Sneezy, Sleepy, Dopey, Doc, Bashful, and--" She stopped. "I can never remember the last one."

Claire shook her head: no help from her in matters fairytale or Disney, despite her having three daughters. Jackson had wandered a few feet from the office. He was on the platform, looking toward the southbound tunnel.

"Happy," he called over his shoulder, absently.

Martin edged closer to Lisa. "Your fella-- that's him?"

Lisa sipped her tea. "Yes."

"American?"

"He's from Chicago, yes."

Martin snorted under his breath. "Little fella, isn't he--?"

_Cheeky_. Lisa smiled incredulously. "You're only two inches taller than he is."

"If that," Claire added, blowing lightly at the tannin-brown surface of her own mug of tea.

Martin winced. "Right." A single ring sounded from the phone on the wall by the office door; he picked up the receiver, listened. "Got it, Harry. Two more coming down."

As he spoke, bootsteps echoed from above. Stanley Burton emerged first from the tiled curve of the stairwell, followed by John Carter, joining them after his business with Professor Becker and the organizers of the freeze-tech summit. Claire smiled when she saw him; they shared a kiss, light and quick, a kiss in passing, in greeting, but very tender, too; and Lisa knew, focusing the better part of her attention on her tea, on Jackson and the platform, anywhere but on the brief, ostensibly very casual display of affection outside the keepers' office, that, for all her assurance, Claire Carter still worried when her husband was out doing his job

"How's Becker?" Jackson asked, joining them.

"He's fine; he's very well," Carter said, as he accepted from Martin a battered and tea-filled pine-green mug. "He and Dermott are getting on like a house on fire. But Simon had a call this morning from one of his colleagues at the British Museum: a young woman with credentials from a newspaper in Canada was in asking about treasures stored in the Underground during World War II. Red hair, green eyes. Edgy, but not jaded enough to be a reporter."

He added, pointedly: "She said her name was Amy Kendrick."

"The woman who signed the papers for the rental of the vault under St. Paul's," Jackson said. "Did she leave a number?"

"Mm hm. We won't need a trace, though."

"Why's that?"

"Because Paul Miller has found for us our den of thieves," Carter said. "Roland Mason, Rosemary Wheeler, and company are at the Mandarin Oriental off Hyde Park."

"I owe him a cup of coffee," Jackson said.

"Paul suggested something a little more intimate, Jackson, but I'm sure coffee will do."

"Amy Kendrick." Lisa looked to Jackson. "Why would she use her real name?"

"I always use my real name," Jackson pointed out. He touched her cheek, a gentle, slightly absentminded caress. While her skin was still clean, maybe. Before she and he and all the rest of them were covered in dust or mud. "Sometimes you get tired of hiding. The games, the duplicity. Especially when you're working around people who have so many alternate identities you wonder how they can remember who they really are."

"Like Rosemary Wheeler?"

She felt him hesitate. Just for a second. But he kept his eyes on hers, and his eyes were honest. "Mm hm."

"James Bond always uses his real name," Claire added.

"Except in _A View to a Kill,_" Carter countered. "He called himself 'James Stock' once in that one."

"That was Roger Moore," Martin said. "Roger Moore doesn't count."

Carter blinked, frowning. "He doesn't--?"

Claire shook her head. "No, dearest."

From above, down the spiral stairwell, echoed a muffled commotion. Voices, a clanking of heavy metal, a thudding of booted feet on the stairs. Richard Fallon and his press gang had arrived.

*****

From the Society of Archaeological Students of University College London, they had Ted, burly and square-jawed handsome and prematurely balding; Ronnie, the scarecrow, all elbows and knees, who watched with disarmingly friendly hazel eyes through a thick fringe of black hair; Anne, freckled, red-haired, who appeared to have parleyed her "freshman twenty" into solid muscle; and Sally, a Londoner of Chinese heritage, small of frame, thoughtful of expression, who carried her share of the group's equipment with every bit the ease that Ted did. They had introductions all around, heavy canvas bags clunking to the platform while hands were shook and names and smiles were exchanged, and then Fallon said, with a lecturer's clarity: "Gather 'round, lads and lasses, gather 'round--"

"_The Crimson Pirate,_" Lisa said. "Burt Lancaster."

Fallon cocked his head her way. "Studio and date--?"

"Warner Brothers, 1952."

"And the first 'A' of the day goes to Miss Reisert." He winked at her, looked around at the others. "Remember, people, we are here to _remove_, not to destroy. We are here to _disturb_, not to violate. If Mr. Burton wanted to take a wall down with a battering ram, he would have requisitioned one from the offices of TFL."

"What's behind the wall, Professor?" Ted asked.

"In all likelihood, mud and rats and and a long, dark tunnel leading back to Charing Cross station. In my our dreams, however--" He bent, hoisted a rucksack of equipment by its strap onto his shoulder; his blue eyes twinkled a smile. "-- treasure."

He nodded at Harry. "Lead on, Mr. McKay."

*****

Rippner, like Lisa and those others who weren't of Fallon's group, took his share of equipment while they climbed down off the platform and followed Harry to the terminus of the tunnel southbound out of Aldwych. The tracks and rails ended some twenty feet before the wall; in any event, Harry explained, the hot rail in Aldwych was on its own circuit: it was cold and dead except on special occasions, as when, say, a train had to be shown passing the platform for a film. When Martin saw doubt in the eyes around him, he moved to place his boot on the raised rail--

"You wouldn't, you stupid daft sod," Harry said.

Martin rolled his eyes, stepped onto the rail--

-- and jerked back, his spine going shock-rigid. "_Fuck--!_"

The whole group jumped in unison. Harry scowled, shook his head. "Very professional, Martin."

Martin smiled sidewise at Anne. "It hums when it's live. Y' can hear it."

"And someday you'll end with your skull stuck in the bloody ceiling," Harry said, walking on.

Rippner looked on ahead. Lisa was near the front of the group, talking with Ted, the more assured of Fallon's boys, who chatted willingly with the young businesswoman he'd found in a ghost station in the Tube, temptingly, slightly older than he was, cheap jeans, a cheap sweatshirt, boots, and ponytail doing nothing to besmirch her fresh-faced, all-American beauty, while less-polished Ronnie looked on and took mental notes. In other words, Ted was flirting with Rippner's girl, but Rippner didn't mind.

He said to Fallon: "Simon Dermott said he would help us contact you only if we minimized any contact between you and him. Why would he insist on that?"

"You've seen what a prick I am. Isn't that explanation enough?"

"No."

"You're a perceptive man, Rippner." Fallon smiled a weathered, wry smile. "When my father was finally nabbed for stealing trinkets from the British Museum, it was Simon's father's word that sent him down. Dermott _pere_ testified against Dad at trial. Made for friction between our families, to say the least."

"Silver lining to the cloud, though." Burton had been listening; he joined them. "Your father escaped from prison, didn't he...? Rumor had it he lived out his days quite comfortably in a villa overlooking the Aegean."

"The wine-dark Aegean." Fallon's smile turned wistful. "Still, the taint remained. The stigma. He could never come home, could he? Not home to England. Just a traitor in a display of traitors at the Imperial War Museum."

Ahead of them, the others were stopping. They had reached the wall. They turned and looked to Fallon. Rippner saw the straightening of the man's broad shoulders as he looked back at them. With confidence in his hawkish face and command in his voice, he said:

"Alright, people. Let's get to work."

*****

The stop-bar had to come off first. It was an iron bumper the width of the terminus wall; the bolts holding it in place were pocked with rust but still solid and thick and frozen in place. In the end, there was nothing for it but to pry the bumper off with brute force and crowbars, a task that fell to big Ted, Fallon, and John, whose gray sweatshirt concealed a bulging wealth of muscle across his shoulders and down his arms. The three of them jumped back as the bar broke away from the wall and thudded to the dusty tunnel floor; Lisa and Jackson and the others helped to lift and move it out of the way.

Years back, decades or so ago, someone had thought to cover the original brick of the wall with concrete; that had to come off next. Ronnie passed out plastic goggles; Anne was on hand with spare mallets and chisels; Fallon and his students showed the neophytes how best to hack away. Lisa, chiseling, felt a nudge at her right shoulder. Jackson was working beside her; if she looked, she knew, no one would be behind her.

"To the right," she said, pointing to a spot near the tunnel wall, about four feet off the floor.

Fallon rapped the wall with a mallet, listened. "She's right," he said. "We have a weak spot over here, people."

He made room as he and Sally and Ted refocused their attack on the spot Lisa had indicated. Burton, watching, spoke quietly from Lisa's other side: "I have to wonder if the sumps kept the water out."

"We'll know soon enough, won't we, Stan?" Fallon replied.

"Problem with building a subway in a city that's basically a clay-bottomed swamp, isn't it?" said Martin. "They pump thousands of liters of water out of the tunnels every day, all across the system," he added, for Lisa's benefit.

"That's comforting," Jackson said, drily.

*****

The plaster layer fell away in chunks and chips and geysers of dust; they had to move more cautiously once they reached the brick layer beyond it. Not that there was a risk of the tunnel collapsing, no, but if something of value _did_ wait beyond the terminus wall, they didn't want to risk damaging it. As the afternoon turned to evening and then to night, they went by turns on break. There was tea on perpetual standby in the keepers' office, and Fallon had dumped maybe three dozen foil-wrapped homemade granola bars on the metal-topped table; Harry made sure the office door was closed against the intrusion of enterprising rats. "We rarely see 'em anywhere but in the north tunnel, but those look right tempting," he said, nodding toward the bars. The station had a tidy working restroom, in one of the access tunnels midway along the platform, but none of them seemed inclined to venture to it alone. They left the group working at the wall only in pairs, or in threes. Even the men. Even Jackson. The din of the digging dropped away too quickly once you stepped away from the terminus; the silence was there like a palpable thing, waiting. Things beyond silence, too: distant rumblings, the trains from Holborn sounding like the murmuring of the earth itself.

And something else. Of all of them, Lisa knew that she was most comfortable with it, that hers was the most personal experience with it: what Stan called "the subsound." The voice of the Underground.

The whispering.

She waited on the platform while Claire finished in the washroom. She felt a breath of wind against her cheek, like the first stirrings of the breeze that announced the approach of a train. She turned her head and looked north along the tracks.

And he was there. Standing in his gray coveralls at the mouth of the north tunnel. She could see the clear blue of his eyes in his pale, thin face. She raised a hand in greeting, and he smiled.

Then she looked away, at the tiled tunnel wall across from her, so he could make good his escape.

And when she looked back, Jim was gone.

"Did you see something--?" Claire asked, joining her.

"No," Lisa said. She smiled past an ache in her throat. "Let's get back to work."

*****

They made a gap made in the bricks, near the right-side tunnel wall. Fallon shone a light through it, but he saw nothing beyond but darkness, and the breadth of his chest and shoulders wouldn't allow for a more thorough look.

"It needs the smallest among us," he announced. "Sally, that's you," he said, assessing his troops. "Lisa, maybe--"

His eyes fell on Claire. "Not me," she said. "I've had three non-C-section babies; my years of squeezing into tight spots are behind me."

Fallon grinned. "Your only crimes, darlin', lie in being too beautiful for words and taller than most of the men here present."

"Are there spiders--?" Sally looked genuinely fearful. "If there are, I can't-- I mean--"

"Again with the spiders, Sal?" Ted asked. "How are you ever going to be an archeologist if you can't handle bugs--?"

"I'll do it," Jackson said, protectiveness trumping his pride. "I'm nearly as small as Lisa--"

"I'll go," Lisa said. She smiled her appreciation to Jackson. "Give me a hand up, okay?"

The break was where she-- or Jim-- had suggested they make it, about four feet off the tunnel floor. Fallon passed her his flashlight; Jackson gave her a hand up, and then he and Carter held her legs while she leaned through the rough-sided hole.

The air beyond the wall smelled not of mold or damp but simply of age. A scent like woodsmoke. Dust motes drifted in the pale glare of the flashlight. Lisa shone it downward; the floor was dry. She moved the light to the left and saw dust-covered wood. Walls of horizontal slats, piles rising like a small city--

"There are crates back here," she called.

"Where--?" Fallon's voice caught with excitement. "How far back from the wall?"

"Against the left side of the tunnel, about ten feet back from the wall. They're marked-- I can see it-- they're marked 'B and M.'"

Jackson and Carter hoisted her back out; Jackson gave her a smile and a quick squeeze when her feet were back on the tunnel floor. Fallon looked pleased.

"Alright, people, that's ten feet we have to play with. Plenty of room to work." He returned his attention to the breached wall of brick before him. "Let's make a hole we can use."

*****

At ten minutes to ten, they found it.

The Elgin _Icarus_ was stunning; it was roughly a meter high and two thirds of a meter wide, and it was packed in shreds of midnight-blue flannel and musty straw in a crate that Fallon and his students pried open as carefully as they had pried open seven other crates before it.

And it was intact. Doomed Icarus raised his blank, pleading eyes to the sun of Fallon's flashlight while the feathers of his black marble wings spread helplessly before the light: a moment suspended, eternally, before the wax holding those feathers melted away and he fell back to Earth.

"Jesus, Dad," Fallon whispered, "it's beautiful."

*****

At ten forty-five, Richard Fallon and his crew of amateur and student archeologists left Aldwych station.

Carter and Jackson, in Fallon's battered Land Rover, were to drive off with the group's most precious find to fetch Professor Becker from the home of Simon Dermott for a midnight-oil session at Imperial College, London. Fallon and his students, having in their possession a van that was the property of University College London, asked Lisa and Claire out for a pint.

"We'll see they get home safely," Fallon told Jackson and Carter. He'd recovered, it seemed, from his initial stunned awe at the finding of the _Icarus_, now safely loaded in the back of his Rover, and he appeared intent on rewarding himself with a thorough flirtation with Claire. Carter was confident enough in his wife, and pleased enough with the results of the evening's activities, to play along, and Claire, Lisa thought, wouldn't be human, let alone a woman, if she didn't find the attention flattering. In any case, she could handle Fallon, who was as tall as Carter, as strongly built and hawkishly handsome, but ruddy and fair compared to Carter's brooding dark good looks. Or it would seem like brooding if John didn't come off as so ordinary, as such a guy-guy.

A guy who trusted his wife. "Have a Guinness for me, sweets," he said, and kissed her before she got in the van.

Jackson watched from where he and Lisa stood, near the driver's door of the Land Rover. "See you later, sweets," he said, more quietly, as he gave Lisa a kiss of her own. "You did well tonight."

She touched his cheek. "We all did."

*****

Just before midnight in a lab in a science building at Imperial College, Professor Wenzel Becker and his freeze-tech machine met the Elgin _Icarus_. He greeted the statue with long, slender fingers, a spider's delicate touch on the marble, sensing, seeming to read its texture and temperature.

"You wanted to be an artist, didn't you?" Rippner said, watching.

Becker replied softly, a simple statement of fact: "I _am_ an artist, Mr. Rippner."

The machine itself looked like an old-fashioned three-headed CinemaScope projector, and was likely just as heavy if not heavier. Roland Mason and Rosemary Wheeler might have stolen the original sample of Becker's modeling compound; now, the professor had simply instructed his nanites to formulate more, using, of all things, plaster of Paris.

Carter was frankly astonished. "How do you account for the added mass and density of marble?"

Becker smiled a thin, mysterious smile. "Would you believe me if I said 'through magic'--?"

"You could say it's a trade secret and leave it at that." Carter shrugged amiably. "If it works, I'll still be impressed."

Becker looked to Rippner. "How long do you want your new _Icarus_ to live, Herr Rippner?"

"Four days," Rippner replied.

"Very well. Stand back, please," said the professor.

Rippner and Carter took a healthy step away from the projector and the open space before it. Silently, then, and with frank wonder, they watched as lasers marked a shape in the air above the empty space on the lab floor: first dots, then lines, then a ghost-shape, three-dimensional. Then the freshly formulated molding compound flowed forth and out, guided by strings of nanites glowing blue, twisting in the air like strands of DNA. The second _Icarus_ took shape, like magic, before their eyes. In less than fifteen minutes, it was finished, its detailing, as far as Rippner could tell, exactly matching that of its original, its texture the silken grainy coolness of polished marble, black and gleaming. A perfect replica that would be a puddle of black goo in ninety-six hours.

"I'll be damned," Carter whispered, brushing the wings of the new _Icarus_ with tentative fingertips.

Rippner found himself smiling in awe. He turned his attention to Becker. "We need three other things from you, if you please, Professor," he said. "Slightly more prosaic things."

*****

Richard Fallon shepherded his charges to a pub that welcomed the academically grimy, where he bought for them Guinness, fruit beer, salad, and meat-and-veggie pies that he coaxed from the kitchen ten minutes beyond the hour at which food service was to cease for the night, and after which said drink and food and camaraderie and no mean amount of good-natured flirting with Claire, he and Sally drove Mrs. Carter and Lisa back to their respective hotels and, more than that, walked them to the doors of their suites. Lisa took a long, hot shower and fell into bed. She woke when the lock on the suite's front door clicked open, just after three.

Before she could move or speak, Jackson called quietly: "It's me, Lisa."

"Hey, sweetie." She switched on her bedside lamp, sat up muzzily, asked as he entered the bedroom: "Have you eaten?"

He looked weary but satisfied. "No." He started to undress, crossing to the bathroom.

"They have twenty-four-hour room service," she said.

Jackson leaned out the bathroom door with a tired smile. "Surprise me."

Lisa ordered for him while he showered. The food arrived before he was dressed; she signed for it, then stretched back out on the bed. A gardenburger with lettuce and tomato, chickpea fries. He brought her one. "You need to try these." It teetered on the edge of "sinful," crisp on the outside, deliciously creamy on the inside. She washed it down with a long drink of water, then dozed while he finished eating at the main table in the sitting room. Comforting, sensing he was there, doing something so mundane. He didn't read, didn't turn on the television or stereo. He enjoyed his food; he sat quietly with his thoughts. She listened for his movements without tensing. She liked knowing that it was just them, alone, in the suite, that the air moved only with the in and out of their breathing.

Jackson finished his sandwich and fries, flossed and brushed his teeth. The click of the glass on the marble sink-top, the click and darkness as he switched off the bathroom light. He wore a t-shirt and his boxers to bed. Lisa was still awake enough to ask, as he stretched out beside her:

"How did it go with Professor Becker?"

"Fine. We have ourselves a beautiful second _Icarus_."

"That's good."

"Tomorrow we'll figure out how to get it into the proper hands." He settled himself more comfortably with her; in the dim light from the bedside lamp, he studied her face. "Is something wrong, Lisa?"

He was asking out of honest concern. Not a hint of impatience or irritation in his tone; his eyes were absolutely angelic. Lisa kissed his full lips, gently rubbed his chest. "This has all been very exciting. Aldwych, the digging, Professor Becker's technology. Getting to know Claire and John. Meeting Stan and Fallon and the others. I just wish--"

"What?"

"I wish we'd have had more time for a vacation, that's all."

"We will. I promise." He kissed her forehead. "When this is over, we'll--"

"I have to get back to work, Jackson. This isn't my life. In four days, I'm going to be back at my job."

He shifted; he rolled her onto her back. He smoothed her hair away from her face, caressed her cheeks, looked down at her thoughtfully.

"Let Carter fix it," he said.

"I can't lose my job--"

"You won't lose your job. Trust me. He owes me; he definitely owes you. I'm sure he feels terrible about dragging you into this. He might be an idiot in the field, but he knows administration, and he knows how to work people and paperwork. Let him talk to your bosses at the Lux."

"And tell them what? That I'm playing spy games in the Underground--?"

"How about 'on assignment as a consultant to a top-secret United States government agency coordinating an international security operation in the U.K.'?"

Lisa eyed him with mild suspicion. "I'm not working for your organization, Jackson."

"Aren't you?"

"Bastard."

"I quite agree." He kissed the tip of her nose. "Let him fix it."

"I am not on your-- his-- payroll."

Kisses, one to each cheek. "The rest of London. At our own pace. And Claire's asked us up to her brother's, in the Highlands--"

"I won't accept a paycheck for this, Jackson."

"Consulting fee." His lips found hers, softly. "And only if you want it. To cover the salary and vacation pay you'll lose."

His expression was sincere and open. She wondered silently at the clear innocence he could broadcast from his wideset eyes, when, once upon a time, two years or a lifetime ago, those same eyes had been the eyes of a monster, something inhuman. She knew, too, as secretively, that this dichotomy in him was what sent a tingling as of electricity and icy heat through her now.

She slipped her arms around his hard warm torso and said, still looking into his extraordinary eyes, "He's not the only one who knows how to work people, is he...?"

Jackson smiled. "No."

He reached to switch off the lamp.

*****

The morning meeting at the Savoy centered around the following question: How could they get Roland Mason and his gang to switch their _Icarus_-seeking attention from British Museum station to Aldwych?

Pouring herself a glass of orange juice at the ever-available breakfast cart, Lisa had a revelation: "We should make a movie," she said.

Jackson, helping himself to coffee, nuzzled her playfully. "In front of all these people--? I didn't realize you were that comfortable with our relationship--"

Carter snickered, but was good enough to look embarrassed afterward. It was just him and Claire and Burton this morning, in addition to Jackson. Who now found himself on the receiving end of a _look_-- definitely a look of no-nonsense italics-- from Lisa. "At the station," she clarified, for the benefit of the more prurient in attendance. "At Aldwych. They're making films there all the time; we could stage something--"

John, apology lingering around his dark eyes, took a sip of his own coffee and said: "It's a great idea, but the timing's too tight. Even if I got on the line to Three Mills or one of the other studios in town right now, it would take the better part of the day to muster a crew. The summit starts tomorrow; Professor Becker gives his demonstration the day after that."

Jackson looked to Burton as he followed Lisa, their coffee and juice and a plate of toast in hand, to the smaller of the room's two sofas. "That terminus wall is bullshit, isn't it, Stan? Last night, we broke through it far too easily. That iron bumper: no way could it stop a train--"

At the table, Burton was methodically chopping and chewing pieces of well-syruped waffle. He set down his knife and fork. "I won't let you crash a train in an Underground station," he said. "Even Aldwych." He looked to Carter. "I'm sorry, John: I draw the line there."

"How about a cleaning train?" Claire asked. "They're smaller; they're automated, right? They run on programming."

Burton had resumed chewing. He stopped again. "What would a cleaning train be doing in Aldwych? The keepers there-- McKay and Connolly-- they handle the maintenance chores."

"A junior staffer from TFL sends it in," Lisa said. "He doesn't know that Harry and Martin dust the tracks by hand."

"William Donne," Rippner added, with a cool smile. "The nonexistent TFL employee who rented out the vault below St. Paul's. Blame it on him."

"A film crew wants the tracks clean for a shoot," Claire mused. "So our fake William orders in the track-scrubber--"

Burton frowned even as his eyes brightened: "-- which hears the homing signal coming up the line, live, from Charing Cross--"

Jackson finished for him: "-- and hits the wall at the end of the line in Aldwych trying to reach it."

"Minimal damage, Stan," John said. "Certainly no lives at risk. The company can cover the cost of the cleaner, and whoever comes forward in your office at TFL to handle the mess is practically guaranteed to be Mason's mole."

Burton took a moment to consider. "This could work," he said, at last.

*****

"We are _not_ crashing the Thirty-Eight," Harry McKay announced to Stan Burton and John Carter and the others Burton had brought with him back down to the track level of Aldwych station. He cast a protective eye toward the pristine antique train parked along the platform outside the keepers' office.

"They're not asking us to crash the Thirty-Eight, Harry." Martin looked to Burton and Lisa as if to apologize for the ramblings of a dotty uncle. "They're asking us to crash a _cleaning train_."

"And that's against filming rules, too, isn't it?" Quite likely Harry, like the rest of them, was feeling a bit prickly from lack of sleep. "We're to allow nothing that hints of danger in the system--"

"It's not really going into a film," Burton said. "We only need to make it look as if a cleaning car overshot the tracks and damaged the wall."

"And whose record does _that_ go on--?" Harry asked.

"I'll do it, Harry. I'll take the blame." Martin focused on Lisa, thoughts of making an impression seeming to spark in his black-brown eyes. Or, equally likely, dreams of freeing himself from an accursed job.

Which said dreams unsparked when Stan Burton, Martin's lord and master, declared: "_I_ will crash the cleaning train, Mr. Connolly."

"Right," said Martin. "Sack yourself, then," he added, under his breath.

*****

_If they can afford to blow the top floor off of a luxury hotel,_ Lisa thought, _they can afford to run one lousy jumbo Roomba into a wall-- whoever _**they**_ really are._

"That latest film, the one they're making here next," Martin said, as he zipped the chest of his gray coveralls, "it's _The Edge of Love_ now, just so you know."

A bit of movie trivia, just for her. And he pronounced "film" as a two-syllable word. _Fill-um_. Lisa smiled at him. "_The Best Years of Our Lives_ was already taken, wasn't it?" she said.

"I guess. See yez." He smiled back and walked off down the platform, toward the north tunnel and Holborn. Carter and Harry and Burton were already underway. Lisa and Claire were the temporary unofficial keepers of Aldwych station; Jackson, saying he had a quick errand to run, had gone back up top.

*****

Crashing a cleaning train proved to be surprisingly easy.

Carter and Martin, armed with four-foot-long wrenches, switched the tracks on the Aldwych side by hand while Burton and Harry, having moved the Thirty-Eight to safety at the north end of the Aldwych tunnels, crossed the mainline tracks to wrangle the cleaning car from a siding off Holborn. Then stationkeepers from Oxford Circus to Bank announced a five-minute delay in service on the Central Line-- hardly worth mentioning-- while "maintenance equipment" was transferred along the line. Front to back, it took eighteen minutes from the time the boys set out to the moment at which the cleaning train murmured to a halt outside the stationkeepers' office in Aldwych.

Roughly four feet tall and ten feet long, painted bright yellow, the track-scrubber looked like a cross between a very small modern Tube locomotive and the square baggage haulers that trundle back and forth on the tarmac of commercial airports. It normally operated at night, when the current to the hot rail was shut off, so it had its own power: two large rechargeable batteries each approximately a foot and a half square. Burton detached the leads from one of them. "Backup power," he said. "It only needs the main source for what we want it to do. Safer this way."

He then unzipped the neck of his coveralls and produced from the breast pocket of his jacket a pocket-sized notebook. Sheets of numbers written neatly in mechanical pencil.

"I made a few calculations," he said, while the rest of them stared. "Accounting for speed, the weight of the train, the drag from the tracks, the distance between where the tracks end and the wall itself, the composition of the tunnel floor--"

Martin whispered to Harry: "Are we running the thing into a wall or sending it to the bloody moon?"

*****

Harry and Stan caused the crash itself; the others, for reasons of safety, went above. In the gloom of the street-level ticketing hall, Lisa and Martin, Claire, and Carter listened at the head of the tiled spiral staircase for...

... practically nothing. The cleaning train didn't thunder and squeal like its full-sized brethren. It didn't shoulder its way down the tunnels shoving the very atmosphere before it. It ran off the ends of the tracks in the southbound tunnel of Aldwych, skittered on its battery-powered wheels straight across the trackless divide, hit the already-breached wall at the end of the line with a dusty _whumph_ and a clatter of falling brickwork, and stopped.

At street level, a phone on the wall near the ticketing booth jangled a single ring. Martin picked up the receiver, listened.

"Got it, Harry. Good job." He hung up. "All clear," he told the others.

"That's it--?" Carter asked, as he and Martin joined Claire and Lisa for the descent back to the station.

"I know." Martin looked disappointed, too. "Would've made more of a racket chucking a dustbin down the stairs."

*****

Jackson returned from his errand; he and Carter drove off in Richard Fallon's Land Rover to fetch from Imperial College the new _Icarus_ Professor Becker had conjured for them the night before. At just past two, Fallon himself appeared at Aldwych station with Anne and Ted; Ronnie and Sally would be joining them later.

"Good thing you didn't ask for me earlier," he said to Burton. "I had class this morning." For the benefit of Jackson and Carter, who had just lugged the crated fake _Icarus_ down eleven dozen twisting steps and were still catching their breath, he offered the obvious comeback: "Would have made a nice change, am I right--?"

He became more sober when he saw the cleaning train buried in the chamber between the end of the line from Aldwych and the end of the line from Charing Cross. Burton and Carter and had left in place the remainder of the British Museum crates that Fallon's diggers had found the night before: all they wanted was the _Icarus_; all of the items had been written off for over sixty years; the damage to the crates and the relics inside added legitimacy to the crash site. Still, Fallon frowned.

"Looks like you were wanting a battering ram after all, Stan," he said.

His job, now-- _their_ job, actually, for Lisa and the others were once again under Fallon's command-- was to put the _Icarus_-- the new _Icarus_, the fake one (Lisa found herself thinking of it as the _Icarus II_)-- back in the chamber beyond the now-shattered brick-and-concrete wall in the tunnel running south out of Aldwych, and, more than that, to put it back in such a way as to make it seem as if the _Icarus_, real or fake, one or two, had never been disturbed.

"Now we're working in reverse," Fallon told them. He turned to Anne and Ronnie, who were mustering brushes and tubes, funnels and spatulas, all in marked contrast to the heavy blunt tools of last night. "You know the drill, my clever ones."

He explained to Lisa and Jackson and the others, as Anne and Ronnie disappeared into the chamber with their tools and field lamps: "It's a test I give: to fake a site, to make it appear as undisturbed as possible while we hide in it an anachronism for the underclass diggers to stumble across." He'd instructed Jackson and Carter to save the crate in which they'd found the _Icarus_, and all the straw and dusty packing flannel, too; he added, with a smile, as he and Martin carried the crate down the tracks to the treasure chamber with the cleaning train wedged inside: "The looks on their faces when they uncover a Swatch jumbled in with the shards of an Iron Age grain pot: priceless."

*****

Late that afternoon, Ken Warwick was only half listening when Stanley Burton announced, at a meeting of greater-than-moderate and yet less-than-emergency importance (ah, the joys of corporate-speak) that there had been a crash at Aldwych station.

He'd called the meeting as informally as he always did, not in an actual conference room but on the office floor, summoning together his thirty or so people so that half of them were standing and the other half were still in their chairs, leaning out of their cubes to see and hear or at least to feign interest; everyone knew that if Stan had anything of dire importance to say, he'd say it pithily in an e-mail flagged as URGENT. What he said now seemed vaguely ludicrous, nearly like a joke. More than a handful of chuckles and snorts greeted his news: how could anything crash in Aldwych? It was a toy station, little more than a film-set mockup; what trains passed through there were either the yesterday's news of the system or precious antiques that the crazy keepers of the ghost station under the Strand treated with white-glove reverence.

When Burton mentioned rumors of crates found behind the wall through which the cleaning train had broken (and there: see? They couldn't even crash a _proper train _in poor old Aldwych!), people checked their calendars to see how far off All Fools' Day was. Ken himself was too distracted to take much notice. He was jumpy and unfocused from lack of sleep. And from something else: this morning, as he and Amy Kendrick had made their way to the ladder up out of British Museum station, she stumbled. He caught her; she smiled her thanks. And then, still bent slightly at the waist, she _touched_ him. She might have been catching her balance, but her hand went to his thigh and squeezed. Drifted upward and inward, squeezed again, then released. She moved away as though someone might be watching. In her eyes he thought he saw the promise of more to come.

At his desk in the cube-field of Transport for London, Ken Warwick closed his twitchy eyelids.

_There in British Museum station. She touched me._ He smiled, leaned back into the ergonomically padded curves of his wheeled chair. _And those stupid bastards in Aldwych, less than four hundred meters away, managing to put a cleaning train through a wall behind which there were-- oh, yes, certainly-- crates. As if they'd stumbled on buried treas--_

Crates.

_Crates. Buried treasure._

Ken opened his eyes and sat forward.

*****

"Pardon me? Mr. Burton--?"

Stanley Burton was at his desk, reading his way through what appeared to be a stack of hard-copy maintenance reports. He looked up when Ken rapped on the frame of his open office door.

"Yes, Ken?"

Ken wanted to sound interested without seeming too eager, and all he managed to do was stammer. "H--has anyone offered to handle that c-crash in Aldwych?"

"You're the first." Burton smiled.

Thoughtfully, Ken noted. Maybe with a bit of relief. And there: the situation was Ken's to control. Burton was grateful for not having to go out there himself, for not having to get his thick stump legs all the way down those damned Aldwych stairs and back up again. Everyone knew the old man's active fieldwork days were well behind him.

"May I have it, sir?"

"It's not as if they've really found buried treasure, Ken," Burton said amiably. "Likely just railway supplies and shoring timbers. A few boxes marked 'B and M.' The British Museum will probably claim those."

"Still--" Ken smiled back. He managed to stifle his stammer. "--it would make a nice break from the office, sir."

Burton nodded. "It's yours. Let me know what you find."

Fifteen seconds later, Warwick was back at his desk, on the phone to Amy Kendrick.

_Hello--?_

She sounded gorgeously tousled. Tired. She slept during the day, a vampire's hours, before she and Ken descended to British Museum station. He imagined her now, frowning sleep from her beautiful green eyes.

"Ken here," he said. Then he leaned toward the phone set where it sat on his desk, into the sheltering U of his cube, cupped the transmitter closer to his mouth, and added, very quietly: "I think someone's found it."

*****

That evening, Jackson Rippner planned to crack the safe in the suite that Roland Mason had reserved in the Mandarin Oriental off Hyde Park. He announced as much to Lisa, Claire, and Carter as the four of them sat, around sundown, in the lobby bar of the Aldwych. The hotel, not the station.

"You're assuming they'll leave the compound in the safe while they go for the _Icarus_," Lisa said.

"They'll leave it. They need me to lead them to the nanites."

He spoke reasonably, gently even. Lisa looked away, troubled.

"You'll need the dummy code for the safe, if you're not going to crack it by hand," Claire said.

Blue dusk and headlights beyond the arched windows. People strolling. Another clear, placid spring evening in London. Lisa and Claire were to meet Fallon at the station soon, but they had time: one of the most eye-opening realizations of the last seventy-two hours had been the simple fact that Aldwych the hotel and Aldwych the station were less than three blocks apart.

"You can't crack it by hand," Lisa said. She looked back at Jackson, at Claire and John. "The latest models are equipped with silent alarms. If you interrupt the power-- by breaking the circuit with two wires and a battery, through the keyplate-- that's what you were planning to do, weren't you--?" -- as Jackson frowned his surprise-- "-- they'll know at the front desk."

He met her eyes; they both knew she was crossing a line here. Definitely professionally, possibly ethically as well. She continued: "Try subtracting the sum of the model number from the eight-digit international hotelier's license number; the last four digits of that number should be the dummy code programmed by the manufacturer of the safe. With luck, the managers at the Mandarin Oriental haven't changed it."

Jackson just nodded, looking at her; John spoke for him: "Thank you, Lisa."

*****

Night was spreading a blanket of shadow across the trees of Hyde Park when Rippner arrived at the Mandarin Oriental. He passed invisibly across the polished tiles of the lobby; on the third floor, he stepped to the side of the door of a parkside suite. He knocked and called: "Room service." No reply. He didn't expect one. He master-carded the door lock, entered, closed the door quietly behind him. The suite was dark, save for a single wall sconce glowing above the bar. He was at the safe in the sitting room when a man said: "Stop right there."

Rippner kept his hands open-palmed at his sides. He turned slowly.

It was the young American from the bookstore. From the chase, the rooftop in Soho. He must have been hiding in the bedroom. He was pointing a Glock at Rippner, and he was shaking with fear.

"You were supposed to shoot me through the door," Rippner said, conversationally. When the kid didn't reply, he continued: "Only you weren't, were you--? Rosemary and Roland _want_ me to open the safe. They _want_ me to steal back the molding compound: if I do, they think I'll lead them to the nanites." He took a step toward the kid; the kid took a step back. "So if you're not here to stand guard, do you know what that means--?"

"They'll be back any second--"

"Bullshit." Rippner smiled coldly. "They're long gone. And now they want me to tie up a loose end for them by killing you."

"I'll shoot--"

"Rosemary will be very upset if you do. You don't want to see Rosemary upset."

The muzzle of the gun wobbled level with Rippner's forehead.

"You saw what happened in the bookstore when Morgan tried to shoot me."

Terror in the brown eyes. The kid was on the verge of tears.

"What's your name?" Rippner asked.

"Seth." He sounded like a little boy. "Seth Patterson."

Rippner continued, quietly: "Let me break it down for you, Seth: I tell you the safety is on. It is, by the way. You can't resist the urge to look. In that second, I take the gun from you. I yank your jaw into the point of my elbow, and your neck snaps. Or you pull the trigger, and nothing happens. Nothing, that is, except for me cutting out your liver and your tongue and flicking your eyes across the room. I let you live on the roof; you know I don't have to kill you now." He held out his hand. "Give me the gun."

Hesitation. A wavering. Rippner kept his eyes on the kid's. Very coldly, but reasonably, too.

Seth handed him the gun.

Rippner took it, his shoulders relaxing ever so slightly. He held the automatic by his side, let the barrel point at the floor. It wasn't as if he needed the damned thing. "I don't suppose you know the combination to the safe."

A spastic head-shake.

"And the suite is in Mason's name, correct--?"

Seth nodded now.

"So if you call the front desk and ask someone to come up and open it, they can tell you to fuck off."

"I-- I-- Yeah."

"You're not much good to me, are you--?"

Realization. Seth's eyes widened--

Rippner removed the clip, unchambered the last round. Handed the empty automatic back to the kid. "Get out of here. Don't contact Wheeler or Mason. They'll be able to find me on their own. And this is twice: two lives you owe me. Don't forget that."

"No, sir, I-- I won't."

The door shut behind him. From the hallway: footsteps on the thick carpet, running, fading. Rippner went back to the safe. He had the license number for the Mandarin Oriental; he tried Lisa's trick: he subtracted the sum of the safe's model number from the license number and keyed in the last four digits of the result. The lock-light turned from red to green. Rippner opened the door and looked in. He smiled.

The stolen sample of Professor Becker's modeling compound was there. Rippner put on a pair of latex gloves. He removed the metal container from the safe; he carefully unscrewed the top. Then, using a syringe, he added to the compound the first of the three additional things Professor Becker had concocted for him and Carter in the lab at Imperial College.

He resealed the container and left the Mandarin Oriental, crossing the lobby briskly, almost cheerfully, by all appearances brashly oblivious to watching eyes, and took a taxi to the British Museum.

*****

At Aldwych, Lisa and Claire and Fallon, dressed in the coveralls and bright yellow hardhats of line maintenance workers for Transport for London, assisted with the removal of the fake _Icarus_ from the crash site at the terminus wall. Three TFL "agents" had come for the statue, offering permissions in the form of clipboarded paperwork and saying that the rest of the relics would be removed once they'd been in more definite touch with the curators of the British Museum. "They" were, in fact, Roland Mason, the red-haired woman from the bookstore on Holborn who had to be Amy Kendrick, and the pudgy young man from Lisa and Jackson's first trip to the crypt at St. Paul's. He identified himself to Harry and Martin as Ken Warwick. Perhaps he had adopted Kendrick's attitude toward the use of real names: he was, Lisa was certain, the man who had signed as "William Donne" on the paperwork for the rental of the vault below St. Paul's. On the walk to the broken wall of the terminus, he took an earful of fake hell from both Harry and Martin, who berated him and TFL and whatever other idiots, specifically or generally, had seen fit to put a cleaning train on their tracks.

"I feel almost sorry for him," Claire said. "Almost. Grubby little bastard." She and Fallon and Lisa were following the others at the respectful distance of underlings.

Lisa had her hair up under her hardhat; she kept her shoulders squared as she walked, her head down. Both Amy Kendrick and Roland Mason had seen her before, even if Mason's look at her might have been indirect at best.

"Peter Pan," Fallon whispered to her.

"What--?"

He smiled slightly, kept his eyes straight ahead. "You look enough like a fella, dressed like that. A damned cute fella, don't get me wrong--" He caught himself. "But don't get me wrong like _that_, either, alright?"

"Thank God." Claire eyed him sidewise, drolly. "You had me worried for a second there, you old horndog."

Fallon grinned.

*****

He and Martin did the greater part of the work: to them fell the task of carrying the _Icarus_-- the fake _Icarus_-- back to street level, up those many curving steps. Warwick and Kendrick made a show of inspecting the crash site, going so far as to take pictures and measurements. Lisa was the temporary keeper of the street-level keys. She led the way to the surface, ahead of Fallon and Martin and their precious counterfeit cargo. Mason followed behind. He and Kendrick and Warwick had come in a dark blue van with _Transport for London_ stenciled in white on the sides and back; it was parked outside the station, near the corner of Surrey Street and the Strand. Lisa unlocked and pulled back the accordion gating for Fallon and Martin. Mason had a cell phone to his ear. As he brushed past Lisa, for all social purposes invisible in her coveralls, just a faceless Underground drone in a hardhat, she heard him say:

"-- take care of him, Rose. We're on our way."

She knew she knew who _he_ was. She fought to stay still as a rictus chill ran through her.

Not "get the nanites, Rose." _Take care of him._

_Kill him._

_Kill Rippner._

She watched Mason watch Fallon and Martin load the crated fake _Icarus_ into the back of the blue TFL van. Possibly because of the fear she felt, she made up her mind, acted. Possibly because of how Jackson had kissed her so tenderly before he left for the Mandarin Oriental, she stepped away from the open gate, onto the sidewalk outside the station. _You've helped me again,_ his eyes had said. _Thank you._ He was no longer a monster. Quite likely, he never had been. He was simply _hers_.

And possibly she moved now because the timing was so ineluctably perfect: she was near the corner of Surrey Street, and a taxi was approaching on the Strand. Mason couldn't see her; he was with Fallon and Martin at the open back of the van. She simply held out her arm, and the cab nuzzled to the curb and stopped. The driver didn't look twice at her worker's garb when she got in.

Lisa took off the hardhat. Her hands were shaking. "British Museum. Please."

*****

Rosemary Wheeler's first words to Jackson Rippner, as she pointed the Walther at the back of his dark-haired head in a ground-floor office in the west wing of the British Museum, after-hours and night-lit, were less clever than she might have preferred and certainly more honestly incredulous than she would have believed possible:

"A _desk clerk, _Jackson--?"

He was standing, as already indicated, with his back to her; he was placing in a wall safe behind the office's antique oaken desk the container of modeling compound that he had just taken from Wheeler's and Roland Mason's suite at the Mandarin Oriental.

He left the safe open; he turned slowly, keeping his hands in plain sight. In the light shining from the top of the stained-glass shade of the lamp on the desk, his were still the most amazingly blue eyes she had ever seen.

Even from across the room. Rosemary left the doorway and came closer.

She limped slightly as she did. Rippner noticed; he smirked. "How's the leg, Rosie?"

"You did quite a bit of damage to my right hamstring, Jack: you know that."

"Maybe it was you stabbing me-- quite literally-- in the back." He cocked his head, his smirk becoming a mockingly apologetic smile. "I wasn't as neat as I might have been. I take it you're here for the modeling compound I just stole back from you," he added, casually.

"Mm hm. And the nanites you've got in that safe, too, if you please."

Rippner didn't move. He regarded the muzzle of the pistol. "You wouldn't shoot me over two jars of goo, would you, Rose?"

"No. But I might shoot you over a desk clerk." She steadied the gun at his head and said, thoughtfully: "A bullet in one of those beautiful blue eyes--"

His left eye. Rippner didn't blink. A frown flickered on his brow and vanished; other than that, he watched her calmly.

"No," Rosemary said again, more softly. She was, she knew, one of two, maybe three, women who would have seen his expression change. "You broke my heart; let me return the favor."

She aimed the gun at Rippner's chest, at his left pectoral, and squeezed the trigger.

_Blam_.

*****

*****


	8. Chapter 7

**A/N:** This is it, folks. Will likely be back to yammer more later on; for now, I've just gotta say: IT'S DONE. Enjoy. If there must be pelting, let it be with the lighter of the rocks and garbage. And, as always, thanks for being here. I do appreciate it.

*****

Lisa had in the pocket of her coveralls a money clip: her I.D., enough cash to cover the cab fare. When the cab stopped outside the main gates of the British Museum, she didn't wait for her change. She assumed the front doors would be locked, so she circled to the left, running along the iron fence outside the half-length of the long, dark building: she'd heard Carter say yesterday that Simon Dermott's office was in the museum's west wing. Outside a parking lot large enough for a mere fistful of cars near the rear of the museum, off Bloomsbury Street, she pushed at one side of a two-sided gate, and it gave way. She followed its inward swing, her boots crunching on gravel as she crossed the tiny empty car park. Ahead of her, set in the granite wall, was a solid paneled door.

And she saw, before she touched it, even in the dark: the door wasn't completely shut.

She hesitated before it. She touched the weathered wood without applying pressure--

She wanted to be wrong. She wanted to believe that Rosemary Wheeler hadn't followed Jackson here. She wanted to believe that he wasn't serving himself up as bait for said pursuit. She wanted to believe that he was on the phone to Claire or Carter even now, and that they were telling him how she, Lisa, had run off half-cocked, impulsive, and panicked for no good reason--

_Speaking of Carter--_

Almost of its own volition, her palm pushed the door. It was as heavy as it looked: it swung but slightly inward before it stopped again.

_-- where was he?_

No alarm sounded. Lisa looked in: a corridor stretched before her. Two more corridors opened to her right and left. It was very quiet. From behind her, from Bloomsbury, came the sound of traffic; before her yawned a silence seeming to stretch back centuries, as if from all the ancient things stored here were flaking and collecting motes of stillness, invisible by day, inviolate at night.

She stepped inside, onto a polished tile floor. Still no alarm. And no sudden stab of a flashlight beam in the dark, no guard barking "Stop right there!" The place was absolutely deser--

_Blam_.

Like a ball-bearing splitting. Lisa stopped short. The shot seemed to crack the next beat of her heart. Her ears tracked the sound even as her eyes saw the muzzle flash, then the glow that lingered afterward: light coming from a door on the right side of the corridor, far ahead. She ran toward it.

*****

Bullet wounds to the chest-- shots from an automatic, that is, or a pistol, certainly not shots from a shotgun or, God forbid, the slovenly pulping of assault-rifle dum-dums-- always seemed to Rosemary not unlike holes punched in cardboard: the moment when the slug's entrance-point was tidy, round, and dry, followed by the welling up of blood around the intrusion of muscle tissue and bone from the sternum. Rippner leaned for a moment on the desk, panting, his expression disbelieving.

Then his legs went out from under him and he slumped to the floor.

She gave him a leg's-length of distance as she stepped around him en route to the safe. Out of respect, not necessity: she could see the blood already spreading, out and away from that tidy hole in his chest, darkening to black the gray of his shirt; and he was coughing softly, rhythmically: the sound of his heart drowning as his pericardium filled with blood.

She felt his glazing eyes watch her as she looked into the safe. Two containers. One: the modeling compound, the Play Doh Rippner had just stolen from Rosemary and Mason's suite at the Mandarin Oriental. And two: Professor Becker's precious, elusive nanites. She packed both into the pulse-proof case Seth Patterson had been kind, clever, and naive enough to design for Mason's scheme; she sent the boy a silent, sincere wish that Rippner had allowed him the kindness of a quick death--

And then she took a second look into the safe. A crack between the back wall and the top: she tapped the wall, and it rang hollow; she gave its base a quick, hard punch, and it fell forward.

She looked at what waited behind the false back wall. Then she smirked over her shoulder, apologetically, at Rippner.

"Oh, Jackson, I wasn't meant to see the _real_ ones, was I--?"

At the back of the safe were two more containers. The real nanites. The real modeling compound.

"No--" Rippner's voice was a gurgling whisper. He reached for her without coming anywhere near her; she looked at him sympathetically as she packed away the second set of containers.

"You don't take mind if I take the lot, do you, darling--?" She kept her eyes on him as she stepped back around him. He'd be dead within seconds; nevertheless, she'd never known him to misspend time, and she couldn't imagine him as anything less than perfectly efficient, even if he _were_ dying. "Just to be on the safe--"

"Hey," a woman's voice said. From right in front of her.

"-- side," Rosemary finished. Shocked but moving smoothly, she swung the Walther around, brought it to bear. She had an impression of a woman roughly her size and age, dark hair caught up in a bun on her head, in gray coveralls, her face a mask of anger and grief; she found herself thinking, in the second before she squeezed the trigger, _What is a janitor doing here, and why in the hell is she so upset--?_

And then the janitor's boot caught Rosemary's hand with a razor-sharp close-quarters kick, and the Walther spun off, unfired, into the air.

*****

Lisa felt as surprised as Rosemary Wheeler looked. She'd practiced that kick with Jackson back in Miami; she never dreamed it would work. But she wasn't dreaming now, or even really thinking. Her body was acting on its own. She was just a spectator, it seemed, and what she saw next, both she and Rosemary, in fact, was her right fist colliding with Rosemary's nose.

*****

Cartilage meeting knuckle: a sponge-push impact. Maybe a crunch of bone. A surprisingly delicate red ribbon of blood arcing through the air. And a tremendous jolt of pain--

She stumbled back a step, Rosemary did. Looked incredulously at the janitor-- the _desk clerk_-- dropping to a balanced fighting stance before her. Left leg forward, right fist back. Gray eyes focused, face angrily calm. Rosemary didn't bother looking for the Walther.

She grabbed the leather satchel holding the nanites and the modeling compound, pulled the lamp off the desk, and ran for the door.

*****

Lisa, operating purely on instinct, became a predator when Rosemary fled. Rosemary reached the office door; Lisa, blind with anger, ran after her.

And, just inside the door, she was tackled in the dark. Sideswiped. She and her attacker fell into a bookshelf, a tall vase or two, a table stacked with papers. The wind grunted out of both of them. A forearm blocked her mouth, and she bit down on it as hard as she could; she thrashed and kicked against a man's large, powerful torso, tried to angle her head for a shot to his face or jaw. But he held on. Wheeler's running footsteps faded in the tiled distance. From the pocket-sized car park beyond the end of the hall, a door slammed shut, an engine roared, tires kicked up gravel.

"_Jesus_, woman," John Carter whispered, in irritation and pain, as he let Lisa go. "That fucking _hurt_."

Carter. It was John climbing off of her, stumbling to his feet.

Lisa lay for a moment, stunned, on the floor, the air still half-knocked out of her. She looked toward the rear of the office, and even in the darkness, she could see--

--

--

-- Jackson, pulling himself slowly into the chair behind the desk. Lisa got up. Her heart was slamming against her sternum. Adrenaline was pulsing through her like electroshock. Carter switched on the overhead light.

"Baby, don't move," Lisa whispered. She stepped toward Jackson tentatively, as if death were a bomb inside him waiting to explode. Her eyes were locked on the gore darkening his chest. "You have to stay still--"

He was pale, but very much alive. He smiled painfully up at her and lifted the hem of his sweatshirt to reveal the bulletproof vest below. He fingered the hole in the tight black mesh above his heart. The squib bleeding fake blood.

"You never asked where I went on my errand this afternoon," he said. He patted his chest. "The latest in thin-panel Kevlar. Our guys at Three Mills were good enough to set me up with a blood pack, too."

"Does it hurt?" Lisa asked.

"Yes."

Her voice was absolutely flat. "Good."

"It's kind of like being kicked by a cow," said Carter.

"So speaks the former farm boy," Jackson countered, panting.

By then, Carter was again looking incredulously at his forearm. "She _bit_ me."

"I'd say you got off easy." Jackson returned his attention to the interloper. "Christ, Lisa, what are you doing here? You could have been shot--!"

Anger flared in her, suddenly, hot enough to take her breath away. "You _were_ shot--!"

"That was all part of the plan--"

"Fucking-- the _fuck_--" Lisa stared at him. "God damn it, Jackson, who makes plans like that--?"

He did, obviously. He looked honestly surprised. "You weren't supposed to be here. Baby, you were supposed to be with Claire and Fallon--"

"Don't you fucking 'baby' me." She was trying not to cry. Lisa pulled her hands along her temples hard enough, painfully enough, to keep her tears at bay. She drew and released a deep breath, then another, while Jackson and Carter stayed quiet; she said, finally, more evenly: "I mean, it didn't work, did it--? She got what she came for: she has the nanites and the compound--"

Jackson's tone was sly: "Does she?"

Lisa frowned at him. "But I thought-- they were here, in the safe, in Simon Dermott's office--"

He hazarded the beginning of a smile. "They _are_ in the safe in Simon Dermott's office, Lisa."

"Next door," Carter continued for him. "This isn't Simon's office." He gave Lisa a moment to absorb the words before he continued. "The nanites and the modeling compound are safe: I was _in_ Simon's office, right there, in fact--" -- and he pointed toward a space invisible beyond the right-hand wall-- "-- keeping watch over them the whole time. Up until you decided to hand Rosemary her ass on a platter, that is. Have to admit: that alone was worth the price of admission."

"But you didn't want me to catch her," Lisa said. "She had to get away."

"Precisely. That's why you didn't see any guards when you came in, either: per our good Mr. Dermott's orders, they're all off in the south wing until ten-thirty."

Jackson winced as he got to his feet. Lisa, concern getting the better of her diminishing anger, went to help him.

Straightening his clothes, checking himself for hidden damage, Carter watched. "Someday, Jackson, someone is going to aim for your head," he said.

"I _am_ trying to change jobs, John: remember--?"

*****

A neighborhood or so away, Amy Kendrick and Roland Mason dropped Ken Warwick at his flat before they headed for a hotel near Heathrow. The container Seth Patterson designed for the nanites was working; it was green-lit; the nanites were safely insulated from any kill-pulse Professor Becker might send their way. In the back of the van, Rosemary Wheeler was in pain and grumbling: "That bitch broke my nose." Or _by doze._ Ken could see Amy trying desperately not to smirk; after all, her wincing female partner-in-crime might still have a gun. When they reached his block of flats and he climbed out, she followed him.

"You'll get your money," she said, looking up at him, standing there on the worn and weedy sidewalk. "Don't worry."

"It's been fun," he replied, looking back at her. "Take care, Miss Kendrick."

"You too, Mr. Warwick." She leaned up and kissed his cheek. "Thank you."

In her face was the freshness he'd seen in her the day she first approached his cubicle at Transport for London. He chose to believe, now as then, that it wasn't a front.

He smiled. "You're welcome."

She laid her hand, just for a moment, on his arm. Then she got back in the van, and Ken watched her drive off before he climbed the dark steps to the door of his flat.

*****

What Ken Warwick and Amy Kendrick and Rosemary Wheeler and Roland Mason didn't know, as they drove their soon-to-be-abandoned Transport for London van to Heathrow, was just how little real material they possessed, and how near to destruction all of that material really was. Jackson explained it for Lisa as he and she and John rode in an ambulance to St. Thomas' Hospital (Carter had insisted on that, the ambulance ride: all part of authenticating the end of the ruse).

"We asked three things of Professor Becker in addition to the second _Icarus_," Jackson told Lisa, as they sat side by side on med-tech jump-seats. He'd refused to play his "man down" role to the point of lying on the red-blanketed gurney. "One, a set of samples that look 'live,' but aren't."

"That was what Rosemary found at the back of the safe," Carter said, seated opposite them and leaning near to make himself heard without raising his voice. "Neutral material masquerading as nanites and modeling compound in a set of green-lit jars."

"Two," Jackson continued, "a real nanite sample that's actually nothing more than a very thin layer of nanites over neutral material. Underneath the neutral stuff is a tiny transmitter programmed to pulse the nanites from within the jar, in approximately seventy-two hours. The kill signal, so to say, will be coming from inside the house."

"_When a Stranger Calls,_" Lisa said.

Jackson smiled. "I knew you'd appreciate that."

She rested her hand over his, on his right knee. "What's number three?"

"Something I added to the modeling compound I stole back from Mason and Rosemary's suite: a command injection of nanites that will neutralize the compound and then die. When that jar is next opened, the stuff inside will be as dead as dirt."

Carter finished for him: "All this in addition to an _Icarus_ that will melt into a puddle of gunk by the time the weekend rolls around."

Lisa raised her eyebrows. "Mr. Mason's buyer will _not_ be happy."

Jackson gently thatched his fingers with hers. She didn't draw away. "That's what we're hoping," he said.

*****

In the emergency ward of St. Thomas', all three of them were seen by a doctor friendly to the company, a whippet-trim balding man in his young fifties whose brown eyes seemed to have seen it all and then some. Jackson had a contusion and nasty bruising to his left pectoral; Lisa actually broke the skin on Carter's forearm when she bit him. Lisa herself, as Carter's one-time tackling dummy, had a new set of bruises to add to those she'd acquired fleeing from Robert Grant three nights back.

"I won't ask what happened," the doctor said.

"Sometimes we like it a little rough." Seated, shirtless and pallid, on an examining table, Jackson kept his eyes on Lisa as he spoke. Apologetically. A little beseechingly, maybe. Once again, he wasn't looking at her; he was looking _into_ her.

And she knew, with a tremor of realization, that she was looking into him as well.

"But only sometimes," she said, softly.

*****

*****

Two days later.

*****

"We have to ask-- we at the museum have to ask: what will become of the _Icarus_ now?" In a pub of Richard Fallon's choosing, knocking elbows with the early afternoon lunch crowd at a table too near the front windows for his liking, Simon Dermott sipped with distaste at a pint of Guinness.

Fallon good-naturedly leaned his broad shoulders out of the way of a young man squeezing by with a pint glass in one hand, two sandwich-and-chips baskets balanced in the other. "What _Icarus_ might that be, Simon?"

"Do I need to quote the catalogue number--?" Dermott snapped.

"We never found it, Simon," said Fallon. He took a long drink from his foam-filigreed glass while Dermott absorbed the words. "The good professor made his copies from the stock photo in the museum's missing-items database."

"You never-- _Copies_. Plural."

"Yes. One for Mason and his gang, one for me and mine. For my students." Fallon fixed his wry eyes on Dermott's befuddled face. Dermott seemed frozen at the brink of incredulity. His mouth was half-open, wordless and empty. "Come visit us sometime, Simon," Fallon said, draining his glass and easing away from the table into the bump and current of the lunch crowd. "You're always welcome."

*****

He stopped for a visit before his three o'clock seminar.

Not Dermott, of course. He would need time, Simon would, to sift through the implications, to tamp down his pride, to come, with luck, to the conclusion that the thing belonged where it was.

Richard Fallon stood in the front hallway of the grand old building that the Society of Archaeological Students of University College London and looked through the main parlor at the _Icarus_, the real one, where it stood in its place of honor: centered against the back wall between the high windows, behind the long ash-wood buffet that served sometimes as a meeting-table, more often as a bar. On party nights, all the ales and whiskeys and vodkas of Christendom would be the fallen son of Daedalus's to survey.

He was running late, but he lingered. Took a step closer, though not near enough to read the plaque already affixed to the wall near the boy's gloriously spread wings. Not an encomium, certainly not a description or history. Just two simple rules:

**1. No polka-dot boxers.**

**2. No lipstick. He's pretty enough as he is.**

_Let him soar, unencumbered, to the sun, _Fallon thought. _Without vanity. Without shame. With only his pride to keep him aloft. That'll do._

"I'm glad we found him, Dad," he said to the empty room.

Across campus, a tower clock chimed three. Richard Fallon left the _Icarus_ and the clubhouse of the S.A.S. and let his long legs carry him, across the green thick grass of the quad, in the direction of the building that housed his third-year seminar on Bronze and Iron Age Britain.

*****

London Transport, three p.m.

*****

Ken Warwick rapped on the doorframe of Stan Burton's office. "You wanted to see me, Mr. Burton?"

"Mm." Burton motioned to a chair opposite his, across his desk. Ken sat. Burton said, half-absently, without looking up from the splay of papers before him: "I've been reviewing your report on Aldwych."

Ken eased to the edge of his seat. "Yes, sir--?"

"Very interesting reading." Burton tipped his head back slightly, as if focusing down through an imaginary set of bifocals. "You do realize that falsifying a signature and an employee number on corporate paperwork is a sackable offense, don't you, Ken...?"

A moment of shock. "I don't follow, sir--"

"Certainly you do, Ken. Or should I say 'William'--?" Burton raised his eyes now, and those eyes were sharp and uncomfortably intent. "'William Donne.' Ring any bells?"

"No... sir."

"Well, hearken to the merry pealing."

The papers he'd been looking at when Ken walked in: he turned two of them toward Ken now. The first was a copy of the rental agreement that Ken had drawn up for Amy Kendrick, for the vault below St. Paul's.

The second was a requisition for maintenance equipment to be routed onto the tracks of Aldwych station, dated three days earlier. A request also initiated by "William Donne."

"It appears you crashed that cleaning train as well. Odd--" Burton added, drolly, "-- you neglected to mention that in your report, Ken."

Ken nearly protested: the vault under St. Paul's was his doing, yes, but he'd had nothing to do with that cleaning train. He opened his mouth--

Stopped.

He looked into Burton's eyes, and he thought: _He knows. St. Paul's, Aldwych, British Museum station. The _Icarus_. Mason and Wheeler and Amy Kendrick. He knows everything._

He'd underestimated the old man. He knew that now, too.

"You might want to box up a few of your things, Ken," Burton said, his voice with its Welsh accent nearly gentle. "I've already rung Security; they'll be walking you out."

*****

New York City, two days later.

*****

_I'm very pleased, Mr. Mason,_ said Makis Kazandzoglou.

Standing with the phone to his ear at the window of his twelfth-floor apartment, Roland Mason spoke to the sprawl, the jumbled traffic, the bulky rooftop air-conditioning units, the construction cranes and scaffolding, the worn gray pavement that made up his city, and he spoke to his buyer, too: "I'm glad to hear it."

_I have just one question._

The doorbell rang. Mason was expecting a delivery, and Fed Ex had just buzzed up from below; as he went to answer the door, he prompted, politely: "Yes--?"

The Fed Ex driver was not alone. Three men stood to the sides. Mason signed for his package. As the deliveryman took his electronic sign box and stylus and made for the elevator, the men invited themselves in. Mason, who wasn't carrying a weapon, stepped aside as they entered.

Two of them were solid, dark-haired, as stoic as bricks, wearing good black suits. One of them lingered with Mason near the door; the man made an "after you" gesture toward the apartment's interior. He didn't gesture with his other hand at the gun holstered against his side. He didn't have to. Mason stepped back into his apartment, and the man closed the door.

The third man was wearing a suit in beautiful antiqued-oak silk. He was medium height, tidily built. His hair was light brown shot through with gray, combed back off his high forehead. His eyes were narrow, hazel, long-suffering; his face was weathered but aristocratic. He looked like a figure in a picture in an old newspaper, captioned in a language Mason wouldn't know. He was on the phone. As Mason came nearer, he terminated his call. From the receiver still in Mason's hand came silence, then the dial tone.

"Can you recommend a good carpet cleaner, Mr. Mason?" the buyer asked.

One of his man handed him a capped glass jar full of a viscous black substance like used engine oil. He held it out for Mason to see.

Genuinely puzzled, Mason asked: "What is that, Mr. Kazandzoglou?"

"The _Icarus_," the buyer replied. "Some of it." He looked back at Mason as one of his men traded him an automatic for the jar of gunk. "It is all over my favorite rug. So I would appreciate the name of a good cleaning company."

Mason, comprehending, incredulously stated the obvious: "It _melted_--?"

"Mm hm."

"But you have-- You have the modeling compound, the nanites--"

"I have four jars of sand."

He aimed the automatic at Mason's forehead and added, thoughtfully: "Maybe a cleaning company that specializes in blood stains as well."

_Some things you just have to do yourself._ In the three seconds before the slug punched a piece of skull into the middle of his brain, Mason thought: _I can respect that_.

"You tried to cheat me, Mr. Mason," the buyer said.

He pulled the trigger.

*****

Not one of the survivors of Roland Mason's gang received his or her money. Some of them cared less than others. Rosemary Wheeler, nursing a broken nose, contemplated the nursing of a grudge while deciding on a plastic surgeon. Ken Warwick, newly jobless, sat in his flat as night fell, waiting with his bank account on auto-refresh on the glowing screen of his P.C. for a wire transfer that never came through. Seth Patterson, parked at a table with his MacBook Pro and a double depth-charge in a Starbucks in Manhattan, watched the sun shining through the street-grimy window and thought how good it was to be alive. And Amy Kendrick wondered if now wouldn't be a good time to open a record store in London. A place where people could handle used vinyl, where they could relish the richness of the sound of records, real records, and savor the pops and scratches, too. Plenty of vintage Zeppelin. Maybe just a hole in the wall, an ex-bookstore, possibly, stuffed to the gills with flip-bins and worn cardboard sleeves. They-- she tried to tell herself that she was using that amorphous, semi-singular "they," that she wasn't thinking of Ken Warwick, pudgy, ordinary, loyal Ken-- might call it "Swan Song Records." Heaven knows, they'd have plenty of room for stock in the basement.

*****

*****

Rippner and Lisa spent the better part of a rainy yesterday prowling bookstores, used and antiquarian, so sunny today was to be the London neophyte's choice of touristy doings. Lisa chose Camden Market by way of the London Zoo, which she'd wanted to see ever since she was a little girl. Carter and Claire, having deposited Professor Becker and his magical invention safely into the hands of the organizers of the freeze-tech summit, and due in Scotland at Claire's brother's house tomorrow, asked if they might tag along. Lisa, of course, was happy to welcome them; Rippner was pleased as well. Not that he wasn't willing, by now, to follow Lisa anywhere she might care to go, but Claire's interest, especially, lent a kind of dignity to the trip, even if, as Mrs. Carter confessed, she merely wanted to indulge in a zoo free of familial demands: no daughters and their friends begging for candy or soda or souvenirs, no declarations of boredom, no variations on "Can we go now--?"

So mid-morning found the four of them examining the contents of the reptile house. Carter and Rippner perused the tortoises; Lisa and Claire-- who, honest to God, seemed to relish reading each and every plaque detailing the habits and habitats of the creatures behind the steamy, sturdy windows-- were discussing the differences between geckos and skinks.

Rippner was relaxed and content, even if his chest still felt as if it had lost in overtime to a Holstein with World Cup aspirations. Lisa had asked, and Carter had fixed things with the Lux: Miss Reisert, the company's new freelance consultant, was free to enjoy an extended vacation, which was to include, in a week or so, a trip to the west coast of Scotland. The Hebrides. Fingal's Cave. Rippner had sensed himself glowing when she mentioned that: their love for Mendelssohn's tribute to the whispering sea-cave of Staffa was one more thing they shared.

For now, however, they had yet to best Camden Market. Carter, out of the girls' hearing, suggested that he and Rippner, in the stalls and shops full of vintage clothes and tie-dyes that awaited them north of the zoo, were about to be witness to a most thorough display of punitive shopping.

"By the end of the day, Jackson," he said, soberly, "you and I will be dressed like dirty hippies."

Rippner clasped his hands behind his back and replied to the pancake tortoise eating grass on the far side of the glass in front of them: "I think we've got it coming, John."

A commotion from the glass entrance doors: children spilled into the hall, seven or eight years old, wearing spring jackets over their blue school uniforms. It was as if someone had dumped a box of crickets out on the floor. A box of incredibly _loud_ crickets. Rippner possessed an American's stereotyped notions about the reticence of British schoolchildren: these little thundering monsters put an immediate lie to his preconceptions.

He left Carter with the turtles and sought solace near the poisonous snakes. A little brown-haired boy shouldered in next to him and pressed his pudgy fingers to the case housing the green mamba. He leaned in close enough for his nostrils to make two tiny "o"s of condensation on the glass. He stared into the display-- a thick dry branch, a thicket of leaves, a background of brilliant painted sky-blue-- and as much as shouted:

"He's not in there!"

_For Christ's sake. _Rippner rolled his eyes, looked more closely at the display. One of the keepers of the herd, a pinched-looking thin man in his late thirties, said in passing:

"He's in there, Alex. He's hiding."

"Can't say I blame him," Rippner muttered.

"No, he's not." Alex's tone held a note of incipient hysteria. "He's _gone_--!"

Now Rippner stared into the display. It had to be there. Like a shock-green, shiny length of garden hose it was, according to the photo-plaque in the light-box above the glass cases: how could you miss it? And yet--

_-- what if it got out? What if someone set it free in here? (Rosemary-- good God-- she was on the loose, wasn't she--? With a broken nose yet.) All these kids-- well, screw the kids-- but Lisa--_

"There he is, Alex." The thin-faced horde-tender, now on Rippner's other side, pointed toward the back of the display. "See--?"

Sure enough, there it was, neon-green among the underbrush. Alex obligingly let out a shriek.

Rippner jumped. _Bastard_.

Lisa was drawing near; Rippner drifted toward her and said, under his breath, with a nod toward the mamba: "Now I know what I want for my birthday."

She looked where he was looking. Alex appeared to have multiplied. Now five children were staring at the mamba; ten tiny nostrils were making condensation-rings on the glass.

"Your birthday's in May, right? You might have let me know a few months ago," Lisa said.

Rippner looked at her, bemused. "What?"

"What--?"

Their eyebrows fought a brief and silent war of counter-queries. Then realization lit Lisa's face--

"Oh, you meant the _snake_."

"What did you think I meant--?"

"Nothing." She smiled at him. "Time for lunch?"

He was wise enough to let it drop. "Sounds good."

Outside the hall of reptiles, Claire and Carter were already waiting. Lisa took his hand, and Rippner followed her out into the sunlight.

*****

*****

**THE END**


End file.
